'sTruth

2011-12-16T09:48:00.001+13:00

St Mathews In The City: Christmas Billboard

What does it mean?

It seems St Matthews are continuing a new Christmas tradition started a year or two ago with very controversial billboards. This years is no different. It features a renaissance style painting of Mary holding a pregnancy test kit with a look of surprise. What's wrong with the picture? To this writer at least it says far more about the age we live in than what perhaps St Mathews intended. It speaks to me more of a problem that is really pervasive in our post modern world. And yet it also speaks to me of a problem encountered since the dawn of man.

What do I mean?

Firstly, in the narrative that this picture represents, Mary has already been told by the angel what has happened to her. But, entirely consistent with the post modern view of reality she has to interpret this for herself, she will be the final authority as to what is real. The post modern view of language has meant that she cannot allow herself simply to take the word spoken to her for granted, she must learn what the meaning is based on her own terms.What was spoken to her is not the final and authoritative answer to her quandary, in fact she has shown with the use of the pregnancy test kit that she needs science to tell her what is really going on. The voice and opinion of autonomous man is where she will finally place her confidence. In listening to science she seeks her answer other than from God.

But how has science helped? She should already have been assured of her pregnancy, what has the scientific test added? Will it tell her her child is divine? Will it tell her that her son will be the center-point for all of history? Will it tell her her child will be a King and his kingdom will never end? Science speaks of a certain portion of reality, but to say it speaks of the whole is to sell oneself woefully short.

As N T Wright writes-

Current accounts of knowing have placed the would-be objective scientific knowing (test-tube epistemology, if you like) in a position of privilege. Every step away from this is seen as a step into obscurity, fuzziness and subjectivism, reaching its peaks in aesthetics and metaphysics. "The Challenge of Jesus"

Secondly, we see the import of the message even though manifested in a thoroughly postmodern worldview is merely the same problem of old dressed in a new set of clothes. Mary has done what her forbears have done. In the Garden of Eden there was another who doubted the word of God spoken to her. In fact Eve took to heart- not the word spoken to her by God- but the word of the serpent- "Yea has God said...?" To me this picture is a self indictment of St Mathews and all who go along with the revisionist view of Christianity. It says more about St Mathews than about Mary, it says more about the so-called liberal churches of today who are more content to invent their own ideas of reality than listen faithfully to the words of Him from whom all reality comes.

"I am not a Calvinist but I still think God didn't leave anything to chance"

2011-11-27T17:50:00.001+13:00

In recent discussions in other blogs on the teaching about "election", universalism and freewill the above comment was made as a response to statements I had made. Go here and here to view full discussions.

Christians in general trust God is as good as his word, what he promises gets done, as someone has said we are all Calvinists when we pray, meaning when we petition God we at least assume he is able to do what we ask even if he’s perhaps not willing. There is an inconsistency in the heading to this post that ought to be made manifest.The alternative to being a Calvinist in the context of this discussion is to be an Arminian. It matters not whether you have never heard of these labels, generally people fit broadly into one of these two ways of thinking. In contemporary Christian culture the latter is virtually endemic, it occurs naturally in our thinking. The inconsistency lies in not seeing the consequence of trusting that a person who has been offered salvation in Christ may (because of what is believed about human nature) refuse that offer. The argument would look something like this:
1 God leaves nothing to chance.
2 God wills the salvation of all.
3 Therefore if he willed the salvation of all, then the salvation of all would occur.

There would be no "chance" of anything else. Therefore all talk of freewill in the libertarian sense would be "mere sound signifying nothing". Libertarian free will means that our choices are free from the determination or constraints of human nature and free from any predetermination by God.(Theopedia an Encyclopedia of Biblical Christianity, Emphasis mine.)

What is commonly believed about human nature is that we have "freewill" in the definition given above. Many are unaware and have never really thought about how to define that facet of human nature. Many may not be aware that theologians and philosophers have struggled to define the scope of this extraordinary condition of human nature for centuries. And yet at the same time it is assumed at grassroots level almost universally. Augustine once said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not." Freewill is a bit like that, easy to assume its existence- not so easy to define its limits (if any) with reference to God.

Even a cursory glance at the Scriptures affirms the existence of "will" in both God and humankind. Significant (to me at least) is the almost universal absence of the combined phrase "freewill" in the Bible. Where this term is used in the Old Testament it is (judging by its context) used to signify a special type of offering to God. A "freewill" offering is not the customary and obligatory "tithing" type but is spontaneous and entirely voluntary, in the sense of free from the constraint of a command from God, free from direct moral imperative. You might even say that this offering is, by virtue of its spontaneity and that it isn't obligatory, a gift or favour given to God by a loving subject. But is that really possible in an absolute sense? One may think of all other types of offering as necessary for sins, necessary for the maintenance of the temple and so on, but not this one.

But is it really true to think that we can do God a favour or, in a real sense give him a gift?

Consider this scripture: “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from him and through him and to him are all things.To him be the glory forever! Amen.(Romans 11:35-36)

Who has ever given to God that He should feel obligation... That's an all-encompassing statement isn't it? In fact that is as universal as the following one: For from him and through him...are all things...

It is evident that when everything good you have, and everything good you are or do, is given by God- it is impossible to give something which would make him obligated to you. Nevertheless God is pleased with us about certain things:

If it is universally true that we can give nothing good that didn't originally come from God, we can say that it is a rule, a law. Let's call it the "Law of Dependence".

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.(Hebrews 11:6)

Since it's impossible to please God without faith it follows that "faith" is what pleases him, and that is evidently so from the preceding verse: By faith Enoch was translated ...for ... he pleased God.(Hebrews 11:5 abridged)

Now let's test this law with regard to faith. Let's test our "Law of Dependence" What does this law state?

No good we give or do, or any good state of existence is absolutely independent of God- The "Law of Dependence"

Where then is the evidence for the truth of this "law" with regard to "faith"? Where are the scriptures which (provided they are understood correctly) cannot be broken? Where does it say or imply that our "faith" is dependent on God?

(John 6:29) Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

(1 Peter 1:21) Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

(Ephesians 2:8) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: (Ephesians 2:9) Not of works, lest any man should boast.

(Ephesians 1:6) To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Here the gift of faith is implied in the grace by which he has made us accepted in the beloved.

Now if our faith is dependent on God, and faith is expressed when we choose Christ by the exercise of our will, how can it be said our will is free in the sense of "libertarian freewill"?

Now if you can think of any good thing that you enjoy (either material or immaterial) can you not see that you depend on it coming from God's good hand? How then, in an ultimate sense, do offerings that we are under obligation to give differ at all from freewill offerings? The difference is in our perception, we owe God everything because we are dependent on him for everything. With this in mind, how then is it possible to think of ourselves as entirely or absolutely independent from God? How then can "freewill" (in the sense it is used commonly) exist at all? The definition of "libertarian freewill" as understood and taught by Christians like Doctor Randal Rauser is that our will is totally independent particularly where salvation is concerned. Such that God may offer salvation but he cannot cause us to irresistibly accept the offer.Yet humanity is dependent on God under the universal "law of dependence" how then is it totally free? It is understandable that an atheist would try to prove this independence because our "law" is only validated by scripture, but ought Christians to follow the world in their appraisal of human nature?

(For a more complete discussion on the difference between offering eternal life and giving eternal life go here)

Certain consequences must necessarily follow from believing that human will is independent of God in the sense of libertarian freewill. God is no longer the totality in whom we live and move and have our being something else must exist if we do not abide totally dependent on him for everything. He is no longer the ground of everything that we are or do. What is this usurper that makes room for our freewill in the face of our total "dependence" on God? For humanity to have this independence of choice we must have a will which makes choices possible that is obvious, that is the faculty of will, the potential to make decisions. But is this will entirely and absolutely independent of God?

If one who is declared "dead in trespasses and sins" is able to choose life over death independently of God then why do people bother to pray for her salvation? Every effort by Christians, should- by virtue of this "reality"- be directed straight to the person since that person is (on this basis) absolute in her determinate will. Prayer is a complete waste of time for the consistent Arminian, because on their view, God has already done all that is possible for the sinner. Every time a person, (who believes the human will is ultimate) prays for one to be saved they deny their own theology and affirm the truth of limitation in the human will.

The "environment" then which lies outside of both God and mankind is this thing, this entity called "chance"

Chance is the necessary corollary of libertarian freewill. (Just as water is the necessary corollary of swimming fish) As I understand it “chance” (according to libertarian freewill) is an environment for want of a better word in which neither God nor man has control. Therefore for the libertarian "freewill" -chance is the entity outside of God where all possibilities exist. This is in contradistinction to what a Christian ought to believe who believes God is the ground of all existence both material and abstract. For the Christian she sees all possibilities only as they relate to God, not outside of God.When Christ said "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." He was looking to God and within God for the possibility. When the libertarian chooses Christ she imagines she chooses between the alternatives of atheism and faith irrespective of God and her own nature because she is free in this absolute sense. She therefore looks to the realm of possibility and chance.

What that means is- in order for people to have freewill in the libertarian sense, (which entails that when a person makes a decision not to follow Christ for instance there is no guarantee that God or any one else can change that persons mind), in that sense her will is ultimate, sacrosanct, untouchable. It therefore means that the environment of “chance” is something outside of and beyond God’s control and hence in at least that sense greater than God.

Randal Rauser made mention (in the context of this discussion): “he”(God) “will bring the entire state of current affairs — everything in heaven and on earth — to reconcilation in Christ (Col. 1:20). And you think that means that we’re in the pole position?”

Right there is his reference to a promise from God but it seems to me in the interest of consistency our theology has to also regard and be consistent with how God works this out into concrete reality, So we have the end, what about the means to that end? According to Randall’s libertarian theology positing freewill within a universe of chance (to which God also is subject) leaves God’s promises no better than a person writing cheques knowing that there is not enough in the bank, and thereby putting libertarian mankind in “pole position” with regard to salvation.

This is in contradiction to what (I believe) the scripture teaches. The illustration below is the universe according to the consistent Christian worldview (1) in contrast to that which is influenced by the philosophy of the world in her Christianity (2). In effect he or she has simply tacked on Christian beliefs to an overarching worldview (libertarian ism) and is not consistent with a true Christian worldview. In one all possibility is encompassed within the nature of God. To the other because possibility is independent (outside) of God and man it encompasses both and heretically becomes greater than God.

John Piper on Irresistible Grace

2011-11-25T20:33:00.001+13:00

John piper addresses a misconception of resisting God's grace

An Argument Against the Existence of God because of Evil in Creation

2011-11-19T19:52:00.001+13:00

I found this on atheist John Loftus' Blog (which is here) that hasn't apparently been commented on for some time so I thought I would post it here and my response.

Consider this deductive argument from Richard R. La Croix: “If God is the greatest possible good then if God had not created there would be nothing but the greatest possible good. And since God didn’t need to create at all, then the fact that he did create produced less than the greatest possible good.” “Perhaps God could not, for some perfectly plausible reason, create a world without evil, but then it would seem that he ought not to have created at all.” “Prior to creation God knew that if he created there would be evil, so being wholly good he ought not to have created.” [The Impossibility of God, pp.119-124]. After analyzing La Croix’s argument, A.M. Weisberger argued that “contrary to popular theistic opinion, the logical form of the argument is still alive and beating.” [Suffering Belief, 1999, p. 39].

"God is the greatest possible good." There is a problem with the way that is being interpreted. What that should say is that God is the greatest possible good being. That is like saying a circle is of the greatest possible roundness. Of course nothing can be more round than a circle, nonetheless a circle, even the greatest possible circle, can be joined by a lesser circle thereby increasing the amount of circularity in existence. But if the lesser circle was derived from the pattern of the greater, then its roundness was merely an extension of the roundness of the original.

What if: God is the greatest possible good only while nothing else existed. Having created the world, (not out of necessity) it too is good (with qualifications). God is still the greatest possible good in terms of essentiality and nature, the good of creation created more good in terms of quantity but not essence- thereby God created more good because it is derivative of his own goodness. Or it may be more correct to say- in that God created the universe, all the good therein comes from him anyway therefore he is still the greatest possible good.

"there are no limits to what an omnipotent being can do." There are limits to what God can do, like making square circles, and sense out of non-sence.

Why Calvinists should be universalists or Arminians by Randall Rauser

2011-11-19T12:16:00.001+13:00

I have taken the liberty of copying an excerpt of a discussion between Randal and myself (Kerry) From his Blog (found here) on the issue of Limited Atonement. This discussion has generated some interest (as it should) by others. In the interest of simplicity (maybe some selfishness) I have included here only what Randall has proposed and the discussion arising between him and I. I mean no disrespect to the contributions of other readers and ask that any readers here pay their respects to other contributions by going directly to his Blog, it just gets very convoluted with all the other comments. As far as I can see the discussion is still live and therefore I may add other comments and contributions as they occur. I hope in the copy and pasting I have not inadvertently left out any of the points between us, if that is the case please point that out and I will address it. The discussion is opened by Randal:

Over the years as I have engaged in extended discussions with Calvinists over election and the divine nature I have often found the same two red herrings being pulled out just as things start to heat up.

And so it is in my recent discussion with a Calvinist named Kerry over my critique of another Calvinist (Andrew). Given that I think the discussion is illuminating I have reproduced it below with some commentary. Then I conclude by returning to the first red herring (justice). The drift of my argument shall be this: demonstrate why Calvinists should either be universalists or Arminians.

Red Herring One: Appeal to God’s Justice

The first red herring is God’s justice. Kerry, would you please speak clearly into the microphone:

Kerry: “It seems to me you are measuring God’s love on the basis of his actions towards people without any other consideration. What I mean is God does not just love people in isolation. He loves justice as well. Your maximally loving God must also consider justice.”

Randal enter from stage right. Turn the spotlight. And go:

Randal: “Kerry, I’m not sure what you’re claiming here. Are you saying that God was unablejustly to elect all people to salvation from eternity in Christ? If you do believe that, what is your reason for believing it? If you don’t believe it (and thus believe that God could have justly elected all to salvation), then why didn’t God elect all people to salvation from eternity in Christ?”

Kerry: “What I am asking- is your definition and measure of maximal love accurate? If God is love then whatever he does proceeds on the basis of love. God loves justice so some are justly condemned that is also a measure of his love, it is just that in this case his love is expressed in justice while sometimes it is expressed in mercy. God is no less loving either way and the integrity of his love for both justice and mercy are met perfectly on the cross.”

Randal: “Kerry, are you suggesting that God wouldn’t have been just if he had elected all to salvation by imputing the righteousness of Christ to all? After all, whether God reprobate some or saves all, his wrath and justice are still satisfied on penal substitutionary theology by the death of Christ. So the only remaining question is how many people would God will to save by the infinitely effective death of his beloved Son. If God is omnibenevolent (meaning that he desires all creatures to achieve shalom) then it follows necessarily that he would desire that all achieve shalom and thus he would elect all in Christ such that none would be reprobate. Insofar as you deny that this is the case and continue to affirm that some are reprobate you thereby reject the divine omnibenevolence. The question is why?”

So the defense of the decree of reprobation by appealing to justice is shown to be the red herring that it is. Time to introduce the next red herring.

Red Herring Two: Eschew “Speculation”

This brings us to the second red herring a heady brew of ”Who are you, O man, to talk back to God?” (Romans 9:20) spiced with a dash of “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9) Kerry once again:

Kerry: “Ultimately I don’t have to suggest anything about a hypothetical world. This is the one I live in- and I seek to understand it in terms of experience and in the light of scripture. It is apparent that people reject the Gospel, some accept it. Choices have consequences. I seek to understand this world through the lens of scripture, if I were to be more convinced that libertarian free will reflected scripture better I would follow that. I think that what is damaging is the extremism of both sides. We have a will, it is meaningful- but not absolute.”

Okay, turn up the house lights. Now for some additional commentary on this second red herring in the exchange. This one is centered on Kerry’s reply to the dilemma I presented for his invocation of justice. As we saw, he replies: “I don’t have to suggest anything about a hypothetical world.”

This is an attempt to marginalize my critique of his position as being unduly speculative (perhaps irreverent) and altogether irrelevant.

But it isn’t irrelevant. If Kerry wants to defend his Calvinism he does have to respond to this problem that his position entails that God cannot elect all to salvation. Why can’t God do this? I already showed that appealing to justice is a canard. So what is Kerry’s reasoning for thinking God cannot redeem all?

Consider for a moment that Kerry staked his claim on the position of christological peccability meaning that while Jesus didn’t sin he nonetheless could have. I would respond as follows: “Are you saying that God can sin?” It would hardly do for Kerry to respond “I don’t have to suggest anything about a hypothetical world.” Of course you do. If your view entails that God can sin then you have to defend that implication. Similarly, if your position entails that God cannot elect all to salvation then you have to defend that implication as well.

Back to justice

Ultimately the defense of Kerry’s assumption that God cannot elect all will bring us back to justice, but not in the way Kerry initially thought. At this point I’m going to offer clarification on how a Calvinist might appeal to justice to explain reprobation and why I am not persuaded by that appeal.

First off, I already explained why explaining the divine decree of reprobation by appealing to justicesimpliciter does not work. The reason, as I said, is that Christ’s death satisfies the divine justice (according to the penal substitutionary theory of atonement typically assumed by the good Calvinist). Consequently, to appeal to justice as the explanation of reprobation makes no sense. It is akin to a police officer attempting to explain his use of a lethal gun to detain a suspect when he could have used a non-lethal taser to the same effect.

The only way the Calvinist can appeal to justice is if there is something overall better or more fitting about the damnation of some. But what does that mean and what would it look like? What I suggest is that the Calvinist switch the focus from justice simpliciter to the demonstration of justice. To make the difference clear we can distinguish two different principles:

Justice reprobation (JR) principle: God’s justice precludes him from electing all to salvation.

Demonstration of justice reprobation (DJR) principle: God’s need to demonstratehis justice precludes him from electing all to salvation.

Keryr initially appealed to the JR Principle. I’m arguing that the Calvinist cannot appeal to the JR principle to explain reprobation since Christ’s death satisfies divine justice. However, they could appeal to the DJR principle. That is, they could argue that God’s need to demonstrate his justice in a maximal sense requires that some people be reprobated. One could argue that the DJR Principle is assumed in Romans 9:22-23:

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory

Thus the claim goes like this: Paul is arguing that the reprobation of some manifests more fully God’s glorious justice than it would have been manifested if none had been reprobated. Thus, God reprobates some not because justice requires it but rather because his need to demonstrate his justice as fully as possible requires it.

Now why am I not persuaded by the DJR Principle? Here’s why:

Fuller Justice (FJ) Assumption: The DJR Principle assumes that the death of Christ plus the reprobation of some more fully manifests God’s justice than the death of Christ alone.

But why think that? As best I can surmise, the assumption that drives the FJ Assumption is a Diversity of Justice Principle. We can state this as follows:

Diversity of Justice (DJ) Principle: Divine justice is more fully appreciable by finite agents if that justice is manifested in the election of some in Christ and the reprobation of others to their sin.

Finally, I’m going to complete this depth analysis by suggesting that the DJ Principle is driven by a contrasting justice principle:

Contrasting Justice (CJ) Principle: Divine justice is more fully appreciable by finite agents if that justice is manifested in contrasting outcomes which are all consistent with divine justice.

I know what you’re thinking: this is getting a bit ridiculous. Perhaps. But I’m in the mood for over-analysis and the positing of principles today. Anyway, it seems there is some accuracy in this analysis. So to summarize, the CJ Principle grounds the DJ Principle which in turn grounds the FJ Assumption that drives the DJR Principle.

All this leads me to ask the following three questions.

Question 1: Assuming the CJ Principle and DJ Principle are true, is the additional understanding of divine justice through the reprobation of some sufficient to override the divine love that would otherwise redeem all?

In other words, while God may desire to manifest his justice to finite creatures, he also desires to redeem creatures. Why think the desire to manifest his justice to some would outweigh his desire to save all?

Question 2: Assuming the CJ Principle and DJ Principle are true, is the additional understanding of divine justice through the reprobation of some sufficient to override the additional understanding of divine love that would come through the redemption of all?

It seems to me that if there is an argument that human beings have a heightened sense of divine justice through the reprobation of some, they would have at least a commensurately heightened grasp of divine love through the election of all. So if God has two possible conflicting outcomes (greater sense of divine justice; greater sense of divine love) why think the grasp of justice trumps love?

As important as these two questions are, I’m going to focus on Question 3:

Question 3: Why think that the CJ Principle and DJ Principle are true?

I see no reason to accept these, unless of course you believe that they are somehow entailed by your reading of Romans 9. But that is, to say the least, a leap. And if we have good reasons to reconsider a particular exegesis of a text then we ought to take those reasons seriously. So in conclusion I’m going to offer just such a reason.

Let’s imagine that only 1000 people have ever existed. (That’s okay. The numbers are irrelevant to the point being made. Sticking to a thousand just makes things simpler.) This means that only 1000 people are possible objects of election or reprobation. The Calvinist believes that things work out approximately like this:

Calvinist Scenario: God elects 500 (more or less) and reprobates 500 (more or less) because this more fully manifests his justice than does saving all 1000.

But hold on. There is a serious problem with this analysis and it is that the manifestation of justice that comes through election and reprobation is radically disproportionate. Here’s why:

An elect individual has the full righteousness of Christ imputed to him or her. Christ has fully satisfied the wrath and justice of God on the cross and since that elect individual is counted in Christ that individual is a complete token of that infinite justice.

By contrast,

A reprobate individual must suffer eternally to satisfy the demands of justice apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. Since it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite series of temporal moments it is impossible for this reprobate individual ever to satisfy fully the demands of divine justice and thereby become a complete token of that infinite justice.

To sum up, the Calvinist is proposing that a possible world in which divine justice is perfectly satisfied in some and only potentially satisfied in others is more illustrative of divine justice than a world in which divine justice is perfectly satisfied in all. But this is clearly false. To provide an analogy, that is like claiming that 500 infinite deposits into a bank account coupled with 500 finite deposits is worth more than 1000 infinite deposits.

Consequently, the consistent Calvinist will either embrace universal salvation or reject Calvinist election.

Q.E.D.

1.

Kerry says:
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 10:00pm

Randal the red herring thing, is that what you really think? If so that would be the first time that I’m aware of that justice should be excluded as a consideration when talking of the measure of God’s love, salvation and election. I thought we needed saving because he is a God of justice. I thought it was a reasonable statement to say that our overall view of God’s love must include and be tempered by his love of justice. You no doubt have heard the saying “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done”. It looks like that with Pharoah doesn’t it?
But then I see further down you have already anticipated that.

“Kerry, I’m not sure what you’re claiming here.” Really Randal, in your focused rebuttal you just finished saying you have spoken with Calvinists over the years and they always bring up this red herring? You knew exactly what I was claiming. Perhaps the red herring was put there by you for bait?

“This is an attempt to marginalize my critique of his position as being unduly speculative (perhaps irreverent) and altogether irrelevant”.

This talk of red herrings makes it sound as if I was deliberately obfuscating the issue. You pour scorn on the idea of bringing justice into the question and then bring my motives into question. Was that really necessary; is your argument so weak?
But enough tattle.

You say you “already showed that appealing to justice is a canard.” *, no you have told us it is; I have yet to see it demonstrated either philosophically or scripturally.

Are you saying that God was unable justly to elect all people to salvation from eternity in Christ? If you do believe that, what is your reason for believing it?

I am not saying God was unable, what I am saying is that He chooses not to, and I cite Pharaoh as a case in point.

You have not answered my question: “What I am asking- is your definition and measure of maximal love accurate?” Does maximal love mandate that not a single one need answer for the evil they have committed? Please explain.

If the definition of “maximal love” need not consider justice then wouldn’t maximal love have created an amoral universe? But that is clearly impossible since love cannot be comprehended in an amoral universe; our consciousness is given us as a reflection of being made in God’s image- love is our privilege to know but with it comes the correlatives of evil, justice and mercy.
How God weighs up what is “maximal love” is a mystery to me. Evidently it necessitated evil coming into the world, justice is an empty meaningless term without evil, and so is mercy. We have a moral universe, evil exists, God had pre-empted the incursion of evil with the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world.

You may make talk of electing all but that negates the idea of electing or choosing (like talk of making square circles): Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else. G.K. Chesterton “Orthodoxy”. By that standard if you posit that God elects all then you destroy the idea of election. He would have then simply said- “all are saved”, there would then be no more talk of election. Inherent in the idea of “election” (choice) is selection, distinction, separation. They are necessary corollaries to the word. The reality is God speaks of “election” you have to do something with the word without destroying its meaning.

Jesus said: Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh! (Matthew 18:7)

I take it that the mystery of evil (for all it’s abhorrence) is a necessary evil, and that a “maximally loving” God is just that, not despite the evil but through it. The reformed view acknowledges human responsibility and culpability.

So what is Kerry’s reasoning for thinking God cannot redeem all?
I have made no statement at all about whether God can or cannot redeem all. As far as I can see He chooses not to save all and God being the maximally perfect being has made the best world possible. This also includes the fact that he chooses to “knock some off their high horse” (St Paul) while he continues to let others ride on blissfully unaware through self delusion.

I am not saying that God is unable justly to elect all people to salvation from eternity in Christ; on the other hand are you saying that God (because of libertarian freewill) cannot save whom he chooses from all eternity? Is God free? Are we more free than God? If God is not the referent for freedom then must we look to ourselves?

I have no doubt that whatever moral obligations or duties God may have (obligations or duties which are rooted in the necessity of his own nature) he has met.

Well we can surely agree on that.

If you don’t believe it (and thus believe that God could have justly elected all to salvation), then why didn’t God elect all people to salvation from eternity in Christ?”

Randal you are attempting to put me on the horns of a dilemma but I suspect the dilemma is yours. I neither confirm nor deny the possibility of God justly electing all people to salvation from eternity in Christ. This reminds me somewhat of the cosmological argument. In days gone by it was thought the universe was infinite and eternal and thus neatly dispensed of a need for a creator. Then there was a big bang and suddenly a creator is looming on the horizon again. Now we have to think of multiverses (for which there is no evidence) in order to find yet another excuse for denying a creator. Why can’t we stick with the world we do have?

*Wow! Canard I confess I had to look that one up… I can ’ardly wait to see what comes next… canard: a false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor. Dictionary .com

I didn’t know Calvinism had sunk this low.

o Reply

randal says:
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 11:38pm

“I thought it was a reasonable statement to say that our overall view of God’s love must include and be tempered by his love of justice.”

This is completely ignoring my point. His love of justice is already manifested in the penal substitionary death of Christ.

“You no doubt have heard the saying “justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done”.”

It was seen to be done. Look to the cross Kerry!

“This talk of red herrings makes it sound as if I was deliberately obfuscating the issue.”

That’s not my intention. I think the points are a distraction from the main issues, but I don’t think you’re trying to direct us away from the main issues. I could have said “rabbit trail” perhaps but that lacks bite.

“I am not saying God was unable [to elect all people], what I am saying is that He chooses not to.”

As you know, there are several texts in scripture that are interpreted by universalists (Calvinists among them) to suggest otherwise. At least their view is coherent. Why is it, on your view, that God, the God who is supposed to be infinitely more loving and compassionate than any human being ever could be, chooses not to?

“Does maximal love mandate that not a single one need answer for the evil they have committed? Please explain.”

I already defined love: to love another is to desire that the other achieve shalom. To love maximally is, minimally to desire that all achieve shalom. How do you define maximal love?

“To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.”

Sure. So by electing to save all God would have given up the option fo electing to save only some.

“The reality is God speaks of “election” you have to do something with the word without destroying its meaning.”

You’re playing a semantic card? Insofar as we understand “election” as chosen for salvation it is perfectly meaningful to ask how many (and possibly all) are elect to salvation.

“I have made no statement at all about whether God can or cannot redeem all. As far as I can see He chooses not to save all and God being the maximally perfect being has made the best world possible.”

If God chooses not to save all then God could have saved all. As for “best world possible”, I think that’s an incoherent concept like “highest number”. God could always create a world with a few more daffodils and gum drops.

“I neither confirm nor deny the possibility of God justly electing all people to salvation from eternity in Christ.”

Read over the comments you made that I quoted above. Twice you actually said (the first time explicitly) that Christ could have elected all to salvation but chose not to. So then if you believe God is omnibenevolent or perfectly good you need to explain why this is. If you have a child contemplate that child suffering forever the most unspeakable torments for the glory of God and his saints. Does that make any sense to you?

2. Reply

Kerry says:
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 1:10am

“A reprobate individual must suffer eternally to satisfy the demands of justice apart from the imputed righteousness of Christ. Since it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite series of temporal moments it is impossible for this reprobate individual ever to satisfy fully the demands of divine justice and thereby become a complete token of that infinite justice.”

By this stroke of genius you have not only robbed God of exacting justice, you have robbed anyone of “eternal life”. Why stop there! God himself (whom I believed to be eternal) mustn’t exist either by your definition.

Quite Easily Done

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randal says:
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 10:47pm

“By this stroke of genius you have not only robbed God of exacting justice, you have robbed anyone of “eternal life”. ”

Kerry, I don’t think you’re understanding the point. Let’s assume that eternal conscious torment is just. On the Arminian view God allows those who freely reject him to suffer eternally because they will not choose otherwise and he respects their choice. That is, on this view, a fully just response to hell.

But things are very different for the Calvinist. On his view God could have willed that an individual freely repent and become a token instance of the imputed righteousness of Christ. But instead, God chooses to make that individual reject Christ’s righteousness and become a token example of an individual suffering finitely and in perpetuity for sins committed. In other words, God has inexplicably chosen a less complete means to exemplify divine justice.

So Calvinism has a problem here not faced by Arminianism and certainly not by eternal conscious torment per se.

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Kerry says:
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 3:59am

“On the Arminian view God allows those who freely reject him to suffer eternally because they will not choose otherwise and he respects their choice.”

You may claim that as an exclusive Arminian view but isn’t that the Calvinist position also?

“On his view God could have willed that an individual freely repent and become a token instance of the imputed righteousness of Christ. But instead, God chooses to make that individual reject Christ’s righteousness and become a token example of an individual suffering finitely and in perpetuity for sins committed.”

No I disagree, on the point that- “God chooses to make that individual reject Christ” as before- that person freely rejects him and God chooses to allow that to happen. In the elect God chooses to make the Gospel real enough to one’s heart that she accepts it. Isn’t that what grace is all about? Where Randal is your idea of grace? We acknowledge not only the sacrifice of Christ but the work of grace in the heart.

You haven’t answered my incredulity:

I may be thick as a plank but where do you get the idea to equate eternal with it is impossible to traverse an actual infinite series of temporal moments it is impossible for this reprobate individual ever to satisfy fully the demands of divine justice A reference like that pertains to time- we are talking outside the time/space realm are we not?

I am not committed to any particular view of existence for the unregenerate after death.

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randal says:
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 5:21am

“You may claim that as an exclusive Arminian view but isn’t that the Calvinist position also?”

I think it is very misleading for a Calvinist to say that God respects the choice a person makes since that would naturally be read as implying libertarianism.

“No I disagree, on the point that- “God chooses to make that individual reject Christ” as before- that person freely rejects him and God chooses to allow that to happen. In the elect God chooses to make the Gospel real enough to one’s heart that she accepts it.”

Your statement, particularly the last bit, is sufficiently unclear that it would be consistent with Arminianism. I am not sure how you’re understanding Calvinism Kerry. Put very simply, on Calvinism God’s decree is the ontological ground of election while on Arminianism God’s foreknowledge of human choice is the ontological ground of election. So I provided a correct description of the Calvinist position.

“Where Randal is your idea of grace?”

Grace is unmerited favor and it is found in God’s creating and redeeming actions, above all in Christ.

“A reference like that pertains to time- we are talking outside the time/space realm are we not?”

No we are not. Where did you get the idea that eternity is atemporal? Boethius? Even if you think divine eternity is atemporal that doesn’t mean human resurrection eternity is atemporal. We are embodied beings who will live in a temporal, redeemed heaven and earth. That’s the biblical view. It sounds like you drank a little too much of Plato’s punch at the reception. You know that stuff is spiked with bad metaphysics and will give you a wicked hangover.

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Kerry says:
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 9:19am

on Arminianism God’s foreknowledge of human choice is the ontological ground of election.

Isn’t that really saying God saw in the future that we would choose Christ, so God chose us on the basis of that? Which means what you chose and what I chose is really ultimate. And God ratifies our choice- his election of us becomes in effect a contingent cause. Here again this view denies the omnipotence and sovereignty of God not to mention the initiation of our faith. In my book- God is the author and finisher of our faith.

Does God direct History from the perspective of eternity? That is to say does he bring to pass events, and more specifically, move people, heaven and earth to orchestrate those events according to a plan that he purposed before the foundation of the world? Or does God merely report back from the future to his prophets like a roving journalist sourcing newsworthy stories that will give him a greater circulation? I mean doesn’t it strike you as being just the teeniest egotistical to be in the pole position?

Human freedom is real enough to make us responsible for our decisions and yet not so ultimate that God needs our permission to move our wills. Human autonomy must also be real enough for it to be truly possible to “love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” A love that was not spontaneous is not love at all- but here it must be stressed- that the love with which we love God is a derived love, not- in the purest sense- a native of human origins.

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randal says:
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 5:21pm

“Isn’t that really saying God saw in the future that we would choose Christ, so God chose us on the basis of that?”

Exactly.

“Which means what you chose and what I chose is really ultimate.”

It depends what you mean by “ultimate”. We are only saved because prevenient grace has enlivened the fallen human sufficiently to be able to choose the salvation freely offered in Christ.

“I mean doesn’t it strike you as being just the teeniest egotistical to be in the pole position?”

God created everything from an infinite number of possibilities with full knowledge of every event that would occur. He upholds it all in existence every moment. And he will bring the entire state of current affairs — everything in heaven and on earth — to reconcilation in Christ (Col. 1:20). And you think that means that we’re in the pole position?

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Kerry says:
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:15pm

I said “Isn’t that really saying God saw in the future that we would choose Christ, so God chose us on the basis of that?”
You (Randal) said “Exactly.”
What do you do with Paul’s anticipation of that very issue with regard to election?
(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;)(Romans 9:11)
You have said that our act of believing is the basis on which God elects us; whereas Paul affirms election stands not only prior to any acts on our part, but irrespective of any acts on our part. That must include any act foreseen by God. This follows by what he says shortly after: So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.(Romans 9:16) That is not to say “irrespective” means that we need not believe, but that election is the determining factor.

“We are only saved because prevenient grace has enlivened the fallen human sufficiently to be able to choose the salvation freely offered in Christ”.

Prevenient grace: prevenient grace allows persons to engage their God-given free will to choose the salvation offered by God in Jesus Christ or to reject that salvific offer. (Wikipedia)

On that view God’s election can only stand subordinate to human will- that is patently not what Paul intends. God did not merely offer salvation to an entire humanity that was fallen in trespasses in sins and effectively dead to the call of the Gospel. What God did was to mandate to Jesus the Christ the power to give eternal life not, just proffer eternal life. If eternal life was merely presented to the fallen and capricious nature of mankind then it destroys the basis on which we are to look forward to the promise you referred to: “And he will bring the entire state of current affairs — everything in heaven and on earth — to reconcilation in Christ (Col. 1:20).”
(John 17:2) As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him I have written a piece which you can find here:http://struth-his-or-yours.blogspot.com/2009/08/power-over-all-flesh.html And I would value your comment.

“It depends what you mean by “ultimate”.” Come, come now, you know that what I mean is that on the Arminian position the last and final say as to whether one is saved is dependent on human will not divine will.

“And you think that means that we’re in the pole position?” You know, or at least ought to, that I refer to this supposed superior position of Arminians with regard to the human will and salvation.

“And he will bring the entire state of current affairs — everything in heaven and on earth — to reconcilation in Christ (Col. 1:20).”

I think that really is the point of Calvinism. Arminians concede this promise with lip service but deny Gods ability to achieve it through their system of theology which leaves election to chance and the capriciousness and ultimacy of human will. We know a house divided against itself cannot stand, Arminianism presents a view of human nature which if it were true would deny the power of God to fulfill any of those promises in any absolute sense.

You have certainly shaken my tree as regards to some issues peripheral to this one but I remain at this point committed to the view I have tried to demonstrate.

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Kerry says:
November 18th, 2011 at 10:28pm

So it is misleading because a Calvinist might agree with an Arminian on some issue? The hard Arminian errs because he makes the human will ultimate on the issue of salvation. My view of Calvinism is that when God sovereignly chooses (as in the elect) the extent of his revelation to that individual is enough to make his grace irresistible. Just as in the case of the ordinary course of nature God may choose to bring a miracle which by definition is a suspension of the laws of nature.

If I might make a distillation of your argument against limited atonement. Do I understand correctly that you posit that a “maximally loving” God cannot but help saving all (if possible) since that is what He is by nature? He is not free to choose to elect only some (you say) otherwise it effectively makes the Calvinist God a lesser God with regard to love. I find that interesting because that is essentially my beef with the Arminian God. On that view the Arminian makes a lesser God (I say) with respect to his power. The Arminian God voluntarily, by an act of will withstands or negates to some degree what He is necessarily by nature (omnipotent); something you say that (in the case of love) he cannot or ought not to do.

3. Reply

Kerry says:
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 8:33pm

“Why is it, on your view, that God, the God who is supposed to be infinitely more loving and compassionate than any human being ever could be, chooses not to?”

The answer to that is that he is not only infinitely more loving he is also infinitely more wise and therefore he chooses (as far as I am able to see) not to give the gift of eternal life to all.
There is a problem with your view of God and I have been wracking my little brain to see what it is. Under your scheme God is bound by love to save all, where then is there room for grace? You would turn “amazing” grace into something obligatory, grace then is no longer grace.
You make God subject to a law of love in order to bind him to saving all. You think that it is expedient for God to be reduced to a being with no free will in order that you may keep your perception of human free will. You actually believe that because God can do no wrong humanity is more free than God! You seek to use the love of God as a means by which to bind Him in order to preserve your own sense of freedom. When it comes to love- God must be a maximally loving God who cannot but be bound by that nature and therefore elect all justly. You maintain that freewill entails that we must be free to choose either good or evil and you see that as a higher good. Therefore the ridiculous consequence (from that thinking) follows that humans are more free than God! I cannot (for what it’s worth) agree with this. How can we be more free than God? But that is the necessary consequence of thinking that way. It is a contradiction in terms to think of freedom in the context of a nature bound to sin.

This whole warped idea of freedom arises by believing that “free will” (as assumed and defined by the libertarian) is the highest good. People think that the ability to do evil shows freedom, it is not, it is the result of bondage. He is most free who is bound by a good nature to do no evil. This must be so; he is most bound who is, by an evil nature, free to do no good.

Unfortunately by this point the juggernaut has moved on, Randall has stopped responding to me (at least at this time) Which is really a pity because I managed to get a bit more formal in my argument and believe it puts Randal on the horns of a dilemma. But you be the judge of that, here is my last comment:

Randal said: “If God is omnibenevolent (meaning that he desires all creatures to achieve shalom) then it follows necessarily that he would desire that all achieve shalom and thus he would elect all in Christ such that none would be reprobate. Insofar as you deny that this is the case and continue to affirm that some are reprobate you thereby reject the divine omnibenevolence. The question is why?”

The strength of Randal’s argument lies in the apparent obligation of God to save all based on God’s omnibenevolent nature. Randal says: “it follows necessarily that he would desire that all achieve shalom and thus he would elect all in Christ”. In other words because he is omnibenevolent by nature then he cannot but act according to that nature.

G.K Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy said: “Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits. You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature.” .

I will try to be more formal with the proposition.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand” therefore in a perfect nature one facet of that nature cannot militate against another. His omnibenevolence is in harmony with his omnipotence.

This is how it is for the Arminian:

God is omnibenevolent by nature.

The laws of his own nature preclude God from choosing anything that would violate that nature.

Therefore “he would elect all in Christ such that none would be reprobate.”

Now let’s see how it is for the Calvinist:

God is omnipotent by nature.

The laws of his own nature preclude God from choosing anything that would violate that nature.

Therefore he would elect to create a being that could not violate his nature. Libertarian freewill does not exist.

If we concede a limitation in the nature of God with respect to power (so that men are able to refuse God) then it legitimately follows that:

we may concede a limitation in the nature of God with respect to love (so that God is able to refuse men)

If there are good grounds (like sin) to refuse men then God need not save all.

Mankind has a will – being made in the image of God we concede

God has a will.

Man’s nature is imperfect- he is a creature subject to space and time with finite knowledge and limited power, therefore his will is imperfect (not to mention the fall)

God’s nature is perfect- he is not subject to his own nature in the same way we are because he is the ground of those perfections therefore his will his power and love is perfect.

It hardly needs saying that if God is bound by omnibenevolence to save all, then he would be equally bound by omnipotence to create that which was unable to violate his power.
On the other hand if we see a concession of his power is made on behalf of mankind such that they could resist his will, then we must see that a concession would exist with respect to his benevolence thus he could refuse to save some.

Does God Hide? Or is it we who hide?

2011-10-31T13:01:00.000+13:00

"I often wonder if we won’t eventually come full circle as a species to realize that the proof of this Mind [God] was hiding in plain sight"

From: Absolute Proof God Exists

http://8411c.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/absolute-proof-god-exists/#comment-52

You know, in the past I have often pondered about the "hiddenness" of God. Now, I realize that if you "can't see the wood for the trees", then it's time to hide the trees! I believe this goes some way to explain things. The scriptures say-

"...the heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." Psalm 19:1.

The word "declare" in Hebrew comes from a root word meaning: to score with a mark as a tally or record. So you might say the heavens bear the stamp- the brand-name of God. The heavens are all around us.

The problem is not, as mathematician, philosopher, author and noted atheist Bertrand Russell put it (apparently on his deathbed)- "a lack of evidence for God",so much as a suppression of the evidence.

As some wit once said- "An atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman".

I could add to that: sometimes a thief does find a policeman, a bent policeman that a thief can use for his own ends. We would rather invent a god that we can domesticate, one that makes little or no moral demand of us.

The fact is, any admission of God will suddenly thrust us into the dilemma of dealing with too many questions of morality, like- why do you lie? What are you watching on the internet? Whose husband are you involved with? Why do you pay so little tax? How is it you drove/walked past that toddler injured on the street? Why do you look the other way at so much suffering, deprivation and violence?

In short it is our unwillingness to face accountability to a higher power. Many intellectual questions about the evidence for God (or lack thereof) that appear so honestly to be a barrier to belief, are just so much smokescreen to the real barrier. I'm not saying these questions don't need answering- they do, and I'm not saying that most of the questions people have, (or the people that have them) aren't sincere, they are. What I am saying is what Pascal alluded to in the "Pensees"-

"The heart has reasons, that reason never knows"

At a sub-conscious level we don't want to know God exists, because if he does, the implications for us are too serious to contemplate. Like for instance, our claim and desire for complete and absolute autonomy. At a conscious level we find all these questions and barriers to belief because, at another level we really don't want to know. That is precisely why being "born again" is (like natural birth) a miracle. It is an intervention, an impregnation of the spirit of grace and truth in the heart of a person who, while on the exterior may appear morally good- is systemically evil.. The scriptures point to this:

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"(Jeremiah 17:9)

Sometimes it happens, in such a flash of real soul-searching honesty (that leaves no doubt in my mind as to its origin) that we catch ourselves being angry at something for no apparent reason, or we may get a glimpse of our selves as if from some distant, detached vantage point, as if we were someone else, and we may not like what we see. But this passes from us so quickly we are almost unaware of it, we regain our composure just as quickly as that window to our soul had appeared...and the mask is back up.

There is an objective reality, all things are not relative and when that glimpse into the "twilight zone" comes, take a good look. It's not there to scare you, so much as to inform you. If you will take the time to find out who Jesus is, you will also find out who you are!

No one in the history of philosophy or religion made such audacious claims as Jesus the Christ. Neither Gautama Buddha, nor Muhammad, Kant or Socrates made the claim to be divine. Many, many have come and pointed out a way to God, heralded a great truth to know or how to live a right life. But Jesus stands alone and unique claiming-

"I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me"(John 14:6)

As C.S. Lewis has said: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said, or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.

The Irony of Modern Intellectual Progress

2011-10-27T21:37:00.002+13:00

Richard Tarnas provides some helpful insight into the dehumanizing effects of modern scientism:

The more modern man strove to control nature by understanding its principles, to free himself from nature’s power, to separate himself from nature’s necessity and rise above it, the more completely his science metaphysically submerged man into nature, and thus into its mechanistic and impersonal character as well. For if man lived in an impersonal universe, and if his existence was entirely grounded in and subsumed by that universe, then man too was essentially impersonal, his private experience of personhood a psychological fiction. In such a light, man was becoming little more than a genetic strategy for the continuance of his species, and as the twentieth century progressed that strategy’s success was becoming yearly more uncertain. Thus it was the irony of modern intellectual progress that man’s genius discovered successive principles of determinism — Cartesian, Newtonian, Darwinian, Marxist, Freudian, behaviorist, genetic, neurophysiological, sociobiological — that steadily attenuated belief in his own rational and volitional freedom, while eliminating his sense of being anything more than a peripheral and transient accident of material evolution.

~ The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped Our World (New York, NY: Ballantine Books, 1991), 332.

The above appears in: THE BIG PICTURE EXPLORING THE COSMIC AND COMPREHENSIVE SCOPE OF GOD’S REVELATION (http://metanarrative.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-irony-of-modern-intellectual-progress/#comment-104
This piece is strongly reminiscent of C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man-

“Mans conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man”
“…as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has has been sacrificed are one and the same. This is one of the many instances where to carry a principle to what seems its logical conclusion produces absurdity. It is like the famous Irishman who found that a certain kind of stove reduced his fuel bill by half and thence concluded that two stoves of the same kind would enable him to warm his house with no fuel at all, it is the magician’s bargain: give up our soul, get power in return, But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.”
"A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery."

Time

2011-10-17T18:36:00.000+13:00

Aristotle quipped, “Nothing is what rocks dream about.”

From time immemorial up to this time, people have tried tounderstand time with about as much success as Aristotle explaining “nothing”.

St Augustinefrom around the third century had difficulty defining what time was, saying: "Whatthen is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one thatasks, I know not."

Two contrastingviewpoints on time divide many prominent philosophers. One view is that time ispart of the fundamental structure of the universe, a dimension in which eventsoccur in sequence. Sir Isaac Newtonsubscribed to this realist view, and hence it is sometimes referred to asNewtonian time. Time travel, in this view, becomes a possibility as other"times" persist like frames of a film strip, spread out across thetime line. The opposing view is that time does not refer to any kind of"container" that events and objects "move through", nor toany entity that "flows", but that it is instead part of a fundamentalintellectual structure (together with space and number) within which humanssequence and compare events. This second view, in the tradition of GottfriedLeibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, andthus is not itself measurable nor can it be travelled. [1]

Not much has changed since the third century!

Becausetime is linked inextricably with matter (Einstein called them “correlative”),time cannot be infinite just as matter cannot. Another way of perceiving thisidea “correlative” is: imagine a three dimensional object. Inherent in the ideaof three dimensions are- length, height and width, it sounds really obvious butyou cannot have a three dimensional object without each of those dimensions.They are correlative. You can have a two dimensional object, that is on the plane, with length and height, thesethings exist on paper and flat surfaces, this may be represented by a drawingof a square. But there exists another corollary of three dimensions. If threedimensional objects are to exist then, it is only possible for them to do so ifspace exists, these objects can only exist in the context of space. Just as twodimensional objects can only exist if paper exists on which to draw them.Notice that the two dimensions are only possible if the three dimensions exist.And it seems reasonable, based on the pattern, that therefore for threedimensions to exist there must be another dimension.

Nowconsider this, just for argument sake, what would happen if we assume a three dimensionaluniverse without time? What necessarily follows from this scenario is that allobjects in the universe would be static. They would be “frozen”. Time is thenecessary correlative to change. For change to happen there must be an“environment” that can accommodate it, and time is the perfect answer to auniverse that changes. And if you apply that logic backwards, it becomes clearthat our multidimensional changing universe could not come into existencewithout the dimension of time. It is the necessary precondition for flux. Ifchange were to exist then time had to exist as its necessary precondition. Inthis way we have seen with broad strokes the necessity and natural relationtime has to space, given the changing universe we see about us. It also gives rise to the idea that motion, and the laws of motion are correlative to this time/space continuum.

It isno doubt due to this necessary union of time with space that Einstein forexample had in mind when working on calculations for his famous formula.

It isfor this reason that the philosophical view that proposed “that time is neither an event nor a thing, and thus is not itselfmeasurable” is erroneous. But it is only erroneous if the priorunderstanding of the reality of the material universe has not beenmisunderstood. Time is a necessary correlative of a three dimensional changing universe.

Thiswould seem to pour cold water on the idea that time is “instead part of a fundamental intellectual structure (together withspace and number) within which humans sequence and compare events.”

Unlessof course, what the writer intended by “afundamental intellectual structure” was- within the intellect of God. I am quite prepared to accede that if time andspace are to be figments of an imagination then it must be by God’simagination! In much the same way C.S. Lewis said something like, “They tell meLord when I pray- there is really only one there, if that must be true Lord, thenI must be your dream”

[1]Wikipedia

Changing The Calendar- AD or CE

2011-10-16T19:37:00.000+13:00

Dear Joanne,

Re. your wish to reset the calendar. (Northern Advocate, Oct. 11)

You said:

“British and Australian authorities have declared the terms BC(before Christ) and AD (anno domini- year of the Lord) are out of date and should be replaced with BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) to make our calendar more secular.

You said:

“time is an arbitrary human construct”

No, you confuse the units of measurement of time with time itself. Most physicists agree time is a part of the space/time continuum, a dimension: Time is what clocks measure, it is the units which are arbitrary- not time itself. Augustine said: "What then is time? If no one asks me, I know: if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not." Not much has changed since the third century!

You said:

“History is figments of opinion…”

No, one of the surest ways to differentiate history from opinion is to listen to those whose own worldview is not sympathetic to the worldview of those whose history she is speaking of. The words of the historian W.E.H. Lecky, who was no believer in revealed religion, have often been quoted: 'The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest incentive to its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said, that the ample record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind, than all the disquisitions of philosophers and than all the exhortation of moralists. This has indeed been the wellspring of whatever is best and purest in the Christian life." If you reduce all history to opinion, you would never write your opinion pieces, because, once written, they become history- have I not historically assessed your opinion accurately?

You said:

“But where to begin [the calendar].Certainly not with any partisan religious figures.”

The trouble is your suggestion of Galileo shows an extreme partisanship of your own. Scientism, the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning, is hardly neutral. The Dawkins devotee’s dogmatic embrace of scientific methodology would reduce all knowledge to only that which is measurable!

You said:

“Galileo… was sentenced as a heretic…for daring to suggest that, contrary to scripture, the earth orbits the sun.”

No, in fact Galileo was in support of scripture that uses grammatical convention as we do to this day. In everyday discourse we still speak of “sunrise” do we not? I share Galileo’s view that there is no conflict between faith and science. It was hardly the fault of scripture or Galileo if they are misinterpreted.

It is for good reason that the advent of Christ has had such a lasting impact and this is reflected in the Western calendar.

L.T. Jeyachandaran writes:

Jesus lived in an obscure part of the globe under Roman rule 2000 years ago. He did not travel more than 200 miles on a single journey in his lifetime; he never wrote a book and did not speak a foreign language. He lived under the stigma of an illegitimate birth, was in public ministry for only three years, and died a criminal's death. Yet his influence has spread far and wide throughout the world. Christians claim that this man was unique, and the evidence seems overwhelmingly to sustain it. Even those who would rather dismiss him have difficulty denying his incomparable mark on human history. As biblical scholar F.F. Bruce notes, "Some writers may toy with the fancy of a 'Christ-myth,' but they do not do so on the ground of historical evidence. The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar." Jesus’ life in and of itself is distinctive; that he remains a life of influence is truly exceptional.

As a “journo” you ought to distinguish between “spin” and truth, renowned fellow journalist Malcolm Muggeridge said:

“We look back upon history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

“I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon, more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka. I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

“All in one lifetime.All in one lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy. Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

“All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.”

“Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”

The great value of history is found when we remember it in order to avoid repeating its mistakes, for that reason alone our calendar should remain firmly pegged to Christ.

First There Were Neutrinos, Now Quasi-Crystals

2011-10-09T23:00:00.002+13:00

The foundations are crumbling. Science, the love-child of the Modern era is having learning difficulties. In the past few months some of the foundational concepts that under-gird much if not all of modern science have come under increasing scrutiny as new understandings and discoveries challenge these once unassailable ideas.While it may be arguable the foundations are crumbling, they are at the very least being revised.

'Physics textbooks will have to be rewritten, as well as the definition of "cause and effect."'

In my previous article Neutrino News And Neutrality it is manifest that if Neutrinos prove to be in fact travelling at faster than the speed of light then Einsteins theory of relativity is up for grabs.

This article chronicles the advances in understanding crystalline symmetry and how what was previously thought impossible, not only proved possible in theoretical terms but by a happy set of circumstances became a physical reality.

This is a story of how the impossible became possible. How, for centuries, scientists were absolutely sure that solids (as well as decorative patterns like tiling and quilts) could only have certain symmetries - such as square, hexagonal and triangular - and that most symmetries, including five-fold symmetry in the plane [two dimensions] and icosahedral symmetry in three dimensions (the symmetry of a soccer ball), were strictly forbidden. Then, about twenty years ago, a new kind of pattern, known as a 'quasicrystal,' was envisaged that shatters the symmetry restrictions and allows for an infinite number of new patterns and structures that had never been seen before, suggesting a whole new class of materials. By chance, solids with five-fold symmetry were discovered in the laboratory at about the same time. Even so, for nearly twenty years, many scientists continued to believe true quasicrystals were impossible because, they argued, such a pattern could only be formed with complex and physically unrealistic inter-atomic forces. In this talk, you will see simple, beautiful patterns and a series of geometrical toys and games that demonstrate, with subtlety and surprise, how this last conceptual barrier has been recently overcome - leading to new insights on how to grow perfect quasicrystals and inspire new technological applications.

From the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=551&Itemid=568&lecture_id=4126

This work which began in earnest some two hundred years ago, is important for more than one reason. Not only was the science of crystallography established, but most importantly the understanding of atoms being the basic building block for all matter stems from early work on crystals. Fundamental understandings about molecular structure, what is not possible and what is possible may be up for revision after Daniel Shechtman discovered this peculiar and previously thought impossible crystal structure. After many years of ridicule and disbelief among his scientific colleagues he has finally been vindicated with the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

By sending an electron wave through a molten metal "grate", the Israeli researcher was able to see how the wave was diffracted by the metals' atoms.
Under the microscope he observed that the new crystal was made up of perfectly ordered, but never repeating, units - a structure that is at odds with all other crystals that are regular and precisely repeating. BBC News

Ironically, others interested in geometric shapes and symmetry mirrored in natural crystals were intrigued with quasi-symmetry. The picture at the top of this post is an example of symmetry previously thought impossible in nature. Below are two images side by side. The image on the left is a representation of what a diffraction test would reveal based on a structure similar to the one at the top of this page (if it was a real crystal structure). The test result on the right is of an actual diffraction result of what are now recognized as quasicrystals.

“The first example of a quasi-crystal ever seen by humans”, Paul Steinhardt

The results are so close that the only legitimate conclusion is that these crystals do exist in nature and not just in the imagination of some mathemetician doodling with geometric shapes.

Lisen to Paul J. Steinhardt as he recalls how the theory he had been working on suddenly and dramatically coincided with work by another team of scientists bringing two and three dimensional puzzles into real-world problem solving, from the theoretical to reality.

http://streamer.perimeterinstitute.ca/mediasite/viewer/NoPopupRedirector.aspx?peid=46e1dbb8-09e9-43b3-9e02-8e40327b0f7c&shouldResize=False

The point at which the abstract mathematical concepts of Paul J. Steinhardt and the evidence for the real quasi-crystal of Daniel Shechtman came together suddenly in a remarkable, jaw dropping meeting.

"It's one of those amazing moments you know when You are working on ideas that you think that are totally wild and suddenly you realize that it has some basis in reality"

Prof. Paul J. Steinhardt

Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University and is on the faculty in the Department of Physics and in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. The really interesting thing about this phenomena is that Paul J Steinhardt readily admits that one of the preconditions for the quasi-symmetry exampled above is the need for pre-planning or predetermination. If the shapes were not put in the correct places a certain symmetry is possible up to a limit then all of a sudden a gap is left which is unable to be filled by any of the component shapes used, thereby interrupting the continuity of its symmetry, something which does not take place in real crystals.

So, first the geometric shapes were toyed with and then their actuality in real matter was discovered. This is strongly reminiscent of the conspiracy of circumstances that research mathematician Leland McInnes spoke of when he said:

It is entirely all too common for mathematicians to embark on a purely theoretical exploration of the truly abstract and abstruse as a mental game, only to have, decades or centuries later, their work prove stunningly applicable to some very real world problem.

Follow the Post: Mathematics and God.

Leland McInnes thought it astounding, (correctly in our view) that solutions to abstract maths problems periodically became answers to real world problems; sometimes centuries later. One wonders what his reaction would be to find that Steinhardt, who had come to the theoretical possibility of quasi-crystals, wanted to share this work at the exact same time that his acquaintance wanted to share what he had come to knowledge of, which was the actual quasi-crystal evidence by diffraction that Steinhardt demonstrated in theory. The two images above are what they both exchanged. What is also wonderfully coincidental is that contained within the hidden mathematical symmetry found, is the occurrence of the golden ratio, otherwise known as the Fibonacci sequence a pattern found in the most unlikely places all through the universe.

Arequasi-crystals really achievable?

Because ofimperfections, unlikely laboratory conditions necessary in their production-and the improbability of it (not to mention the very human quality of inertialresistance to change deeply held ideas!), a growing scepticism in thescientific community resisted the acceptance of their reality in nature.Steinhardt explains the objections of other scientists.

PaulJ. Steinhardt is a very good speaker and in this screenshot he demonstratesvisually with his hands as well as with words when he says:

"The only way you could avoid that is if you had in mind the global picture of what the ideal tiling is like, and could look ahead"

Have you ever heard of such a thing?

So theobjection to the reality of quasi-crystals is incredibly that they are notpossible on the basis that it would take a rational mind to put such a thingtogether. Never before have I witnessed such an unashamed and yet undoubtedlysincere bias against intelligent design or the need for a creator. The nextscreenshot spells it out even more explicitly. The reasons given are: the necessity for non-local interactions and that “two or more repeating units with complex rules for how to join: Toocomplicated?

Thefollowing is a transcript of part of the video presented by Professor Paul J Steinhardt and hosted by The Perimeter Institute For Theoretical Physics:

“True quasi-crystals that would have this true,beautiful order may in fact be impossible, not only did they have the fact thatthey couldn’t make them in the laboratory, but they had two pretty solidtheoretical arguments. The first was that in order to grow one of thesestructures, in order to actually fill the room with those tiles it looks likeyou need some kind of non-local interaction. What I mean by non-localinteractions is the following: Suppose I left you… you come up afterward andyou try to make the Penrose Tile with those chicken tiles ok?

Now you can do itin principle but what you’re going to find in practice is when you start toput, oh, five or ten of them together, you are going to find that you run intoa conflict. A disagreement, what you tile down one end will disagree with whatyou tile down the other end and you are going to have to take some away andmake a different choice and start again. In fact you’ll find you have to dothis over and over and over again. The only way you could avoid that is if youhad in mind the global picture of what the ideal tiling is like, and could lookahead and make sure when you put a tile over here it wasn’t going to conflictwith the tile that you were laying over here; which implied some kind of longrange interaction between the two. You’re... you’re using your eye in this casebut what are the atoms and molecules doing when they make this structure? Are they somehow looking over long distancesin order to decide whether to fit here or here in this way?

Well the atoms we are talking about are verysimple atoms, metal atoms which as far as we know don’t have these long rangeinteractions. So the fact that they seem, they seem to require these longinteractions is a serious problem suggesting that maybe you can’t really getthese perfect quasi-crystals. A second argument is that this structure is verycomplicated, you can already see that as you see the way these pieces goingaround the way these join together is rather complicated, you need severalunits how did these atoms figure out to make two and only two kinds of unitsthat only fit together in certain ways, how do they figure out how to do that?It seems too complicated compared to a crystal which is a single repeatingunit.

These are good arguments, and I now want toturn to them because it turns out that the subject of quasi-crystals didn’tjust have one surprise, the one I’ve already presented you the fact that theyexist, but in these issues there are further surprises to be found. Let mefirst of all talk about this issue of a non-local interaction, let me just firstof all convince you that there really is a problem here. And we’ll do it bydoing not the problem of tiling the plane cause that would take a lot of spacewe’ll think about a much simpler problemwhich is the problem of making a chain in one dimension. What I’ll call aFibonacci Chain, a chain of long and short lengths which follows that samesequence of longs and shorts that we saw in the Penrose pattern.”

In what followsSte inhardt says that in order to convince the scepticthat this is a very real problem not to be understated he follows a logicalsequence of what it takes to make this Fibonacci Chain and what it would takelogically to anticipate what should come next in the chain. Look at the wordshe employs to make his point:

“All of asudden it makes a big difference which one we choose, in fact that one is notallowed, and why? Because if I make that choice there, well, the bottom choicethere, what’ll happen is you’ll end upwith a chain which goes….. … and… that you’ll never find in the ideal lattice….

So there’s a proof an absolute proof, I’ve just done it by hand waving, [laughter] but it’s an absoluteproof, an absolute mathematicalproof that you need infinite range information in order to ensure that you can build an infinite, ah, chain perfectly.And of course in two dimensions or threedimensions we have a problem that’s much worse. Because when we build atiling, a Penrose tiling we’re building a lattice of lines which follows asequence in five different directions atthe same time, so this looks really impossible. And in fact if I begintiling according to Penrose’s rule that I add a first tile and then add asecond tile following the joining rule, and a third and a fourth, a fifth etc.and just as I described with the chickens you’ll typically find after a handfulor so of tiles I run into a problem, ok. And the only way to get rid of thatproblem is either to look ahead to avoid the problem ok, with a longer rangeinteraction or I have to keep taking stuff away and replacing it, taking stuffaway and replacing it. So the fact that one cannot make these highly perfectbeautiful faceted large quasi crystals seems to be understood perfectly fromthis simple geometric argument. The only thing is, this argument turns out tobe wrong. It’s quite surprising that it is wrong for example just when youthink you understand what’s going on in this subject, that’s what I find soexciting about this subject, something surprising happens.” [Emphasis mine]

In shortthese things cannot exist because they necessarily require an intelligence toforesee and predetermine how they must fit together before the sequence isstarted!

"Infinite range information"

is what we might call foreknowledge, or omnipotent, omniscient predestination in theological terms! If I were to borrow terms used commonly in discussions ofmicro-biology and cosmology, the conditions necessary for their growth is irreducibly complex or of a specified complexity, far too complex asit happens for random activity.

It was theconvoluted logic necessary for atheists to maintain their worldview that firstaroused suspicion in G.K. Chesterton, whose wry observations of their mentalgymnastics finally convinced him of the truth of theism.

All things were made by Him

It is our firm conviction that the reason mathematics, a shorthand form of logic and the foundation of much science, is so successful in understanding and making the universe intelligible to humanity is best explained by the idea that the universe was actually created by the use of mathematical principles. Maths is a way of logically expressing material properties in an abstract form. Or as Leland McInnes has stated: Maths is the art of abstraction.

In the Gospel of John in the New Testament we read:

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him [Logos]; and without him was not any thing made that was made.(John 1:1-3)

What is translated as "Word" in English loses some of its richness in meaning that John intended when he used the Greek word "Logos" Inherent in that word are the ideas of the logical, reasoning word. With this in mind- is it at all surprising that we should find inherent in all of creation an ever increasing complexity and yet it still yielding its secrets to intelligence? There has been no other sufficient answer other than that it is the result of an intelligent creator, whose stamp of logic is indelibly written in the mechanics of His world.

While all this is demonstrably true, we do acknowledge that the creator is not merely a supremely intelligent being, this is just one facet of the creator, we see in the beauty, sublimity and morality of the creation other aesthetic characteristics. So for those who hate maths there is really no need to bury your face in your hands and exclaim in a very downcast tone :

"Oh gosh, God likes maths"

as one person did when the above was discussed! Perhaps along with other attributes we ought to add- a sense of humor.

As a footnote to this, I believe Steinhardt went on to explain that he has discovered a simple rule or formula for ensuring that these beautiful crystals conform to the complex patterns which seem to do away with the need for "longrange interaction" which is science speak for intelligent consciousness. That is really not my contention here, merely to point out the very strong bias against the idea of intelligent design- when something looks like it needed a creator to figure it out and which even had "mathematical proof" of its need for infinite longrange information the language of scepticism and incredulity is loud and clear. The fact that this complexity can be expressed in terms of a formula does nothing to detract from a creator. As Einstein has said his faith in science was underpinned by an overarching confidence that the Universe was intelligible and beautiful. Yet another formula discovered in fact adds to the theists confidence.

Some have argued that religion stultified science because whenever problems seemed insurmountable for the scientist the temptation to throw up her hands in despair and just declare God did it has kept science in the stone age. But this is patently not true, the opposite can be cited (as it was for Einstein), it is that order, design and intelligibility are so much a part of this universe that gives rise to the confidence that steadfast efforts would be rewarded. This is true irrespective of whether the scientific community have consciously realized it or not.

Neutrino News and Neutrality

2011-09-28T22:57:00.000+13:00

Neutrino News And NeutralityNeutrinos travel at the speed of light (or greater?) in the material universe, passing through humans as easily as through the planet, yet they have little, if any, effect. However in the non-material world of ideas they are causing ripples around the world that threaten to become a Tsunami.

[A] recent study clocked a neutrino, a subatomic particle with no charge, at 0.0025 percent faster than the speed of light, which has brought a lot of buzz in the science community.
The neutrinos were first grouped together at CERN and then flew out of the accelerator, towards the Alps where the GranSasso Observatory is located with a neutrino detector. Luckily, a few were intercepted and detected. When the two labs calculated the time, it appeared the particles made it to the observatory faster than the speed of light.
If this turns out to be correct, the effect will be astronomical. Physics textbooks will have to be rewritten, as well as the definition of "cause and effect." This is because when a particle moves faster than light, the effect is like time travel.
Astrophysicist Adam Frank from the University of Rochester said, "Think of it as being shot before the trigger is pulled."

Courtesy "The Simmons Voice"

I had to grin at Joe Bennett's take on the neutrino news. (Go here for his full article) His conversation with his mate "Pope Benny" is humorous. And typical of Bennett's humor it has a serious side to it. A serious subject is best sold with a generous helping of Satire sauce. Once again on his bandwagon he raises the spectre of faith versus science:

"That," I said, [to Pope Benny]"is the difference between your mob and the boffins. They're engaged in a disinterested search for the truth, and that entails a willingness to admit error."

I will not take issue with other dubious claims he makes but this one thing I will not let go. I cannot speak for Roman Catholics, but since I know Bennett lumps all the religious together I speak on behalf of protestant Christianity. Firstly he defines scientists as engaged in:

a disinterested search for the truth,

Obviously where truth is concerned, ethics are involved. While it is true that the scientific method has developed in a way that is designed to ensure unbiased reporting of facts, there are some presuppositions that are so basic to the human way of thinking that they are smuggled in to the scientific enterprise at such a fundamental level that they go unquestioned, unseen.

There really is no such thing as "a disinterested search for the truth" The neutrality of science may be one thing, the neutrality of scientists is quite another. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "disinterested" as:

Not influenced by considerations of personal advantage.

It is impossible that a human being be disinterested in the question of whether God exists. Much of humanity may lay claim to being uninterested but not disinterested. This is a question so fundamental that it should come as the first question of all, if not first in time then at least first in priority. The personal advantage of discounting the existence of God may be seen as the difference between living ones life entirely for ones own ends and a life lived in consideration of an obligation to whom one owes everything. Scientists are human before they are scientists, and as the philosophy of science has repeatedly shown we bring our presuppositions, our baggage with us.

Take for example the idea of "brute facts". Brute fact is defined as "a true statement about something which cannot be further reduced" and hence has not had any interpretation placed upon it.
From Wikipedia:

The term might also be used to refer generally to facts that lack explanations, or which explain themselves.

That a fact may be a "brute" fact shows a pre-commitment to a naturalistic worldview. A brute fact is supposed to be that which cannot be reduced any further But in the act of terming it a "brute" fact it is already a denial of the possibility that the fact in question may actually be already interpreted by an omniscience beyond humanity. In short there is a prior commitment and bias against a theistic worldview.

The very idea of "brute fact" presupposes that an irreducible truth about a simple entity is just hanging about in flux waiting for human intelligence to interpret it, to categorize it and to classify it into relationship with other facts. Scientists have (in the main) hastily assumed, or presupposed that facts, brute facts or otherwise, are not already interpreted by an all-knowing cause.

Power over others: Control and Manipulation.

2011-09-16T22:32:00.003+12:00

"If with dung I am embattled, win or lose I am bespattered"- Martin Luther

New Zealand

’s recent political history one ofthe main maxims of strategy to win the elections, was simply “Don’t frighten the horses”. This simplestatement tells us a great deal about the psychological control beingexercised. Horses, as beasts of burden, work best when they are unaware oftheir own strength. They must be kept constantly in an orderly fashion pullingtogether, working as a team, and they are encouraged to do so. They are notencouraged either to exercise their individual will in any contrary directionbut their will must be at the direction of the master. If horses becamefrightened enough there are at least two possibilities:

1/.They might start making decisions based ontheir own inclinations instead of the direction of the master, and realize thatthey don’t have to be in the harness assigned to them pulling in the samedirection as the others.

2/.The work they are set to do may not be accomplishedbecause only as horses pull together, concentrating and compounding theirenergy in a uniform direction are they able to accomplish the outcome themaster desires.

Well, fairenough I suppose… for horses, but what are we to think when this sort oflanguage is used by a political leader about the voters? Or what if people wetrust start using these sorts of tactics?

This isabout power, power over others, whether political or social, power betweenorganizations, individuals, husband and wife, parents and children or ministersover congregations.

Manyphilosophers have pondered this question and have come up with the idea that inhuman terms all of life is a struggle for power. What are the common methods ofgaining and holding power over others?

In thepolitical sphere, one of the first things that happens when a regime takespolitical control they ensure they have control over communication. Radio andtelevision, newspapers and telecommunications are the next most important thingto control on the agenda. Whoever controls the media controls the popular mind.Whoever controls what is being said in public will, to a large extent, controlthe public perception of the regime.

Does thishappen in other spheres?

In the bookof Acts Peter and John were involved in a miraculous healing which upset the powers that be,the religious authorities. They were obviously upset because this “Jesus” was a threat to their hold andauthority over the people. So they were motivated by fear and jealousy. Theirpower-base was under threat.

Peter wisely used the miracle as a platform for the gospel as public interestin the miracle peaked-

“Neither is theresalvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given amongmen, whereby we must be saved. Now whenthey saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, theymarvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. Andbeholding the man which was healed standing with them, they could say nothingagainst it. But when they had commanded them to go asideout of the council, they conferred among themselves, Saying,What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been doneby them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot denyit. But that it spread no further amongthe people, let us straitly threaten them, that they speak henceforth to no manin this name. And they called them, andcommanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God tohearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So whenthey had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how theymight punish them, because of the people: for all men glorified God for thatwhich was done. (Acts4:13-21)

Whathappens when those who see themselves as the rightful authority and leadersfeel threatened but don’t have a “reasonable” reason” for stopping an activity?It is evident they admitted amongst themselves there was no good reason toprevent the Apostles from preaching about Jesus by the words-

“they could saynothing against it.” Andalso: “ a notable miracle hath been doneby them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot denyit.”

So what didthey do? They attempted to misconstrue the motives of the others through misinformation and shut downcommunication- and in a threatening manner- “commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.” It is indicated that they would have used forceand punished them if they could get away with it, and this would have beenpossible had the disciples not been held in such favour by the people for themiracle.

It has beensaid that the first casualty of war is truth. Why is this? The truth is whatdouses and calms a situation, whereas lies and propaganda have the oppositeeffect, that of inflaming circumstances. The truth has a tendency to peace, butlies tend to escalate a bad situation to a worse one. Lies and hyperbole (exaggeration)therefore are what people enlist in order to further their own hidden agendas.

One of themost potent arguments for how much God holds and values human sovereignty dearto his heart is indicated through Christ’s relationships with others. What do I mean by“human sovereignty”? By that I meanthe privilege we as humans share of being able to be self aware, responsiblemoral beings. Many see the word “responsible”and fail to see that it entails the idea of being able to respond correctly to reason, to what is fair and goodand reasonable. This is one of the chief characteristics thatdistinguish us from animals. Suppose one were to look at a modern day livestockfarm with multiple paddocks neatly fenced off and cattle grazing contentedly onpasture. Without knowing, the uninitiated may ask, “Why aren’t there cattle inall the paddocks? Why do you fence it so that your land cannot be grazed atwill by the animals? The short answer isthat animals, unlike humans cannot be persuaded to practice self control, toexercise restraint. Delayed gratification is philosophically fundamental tohuman nature, not so with cows! If the farm hadn’t all those individualpaddocks the livestock would ingest the pasture at an uncontrolled rate andconsequently the animals would starve themselves when winter grass growth ratesweren’t able to keep up with demand.

Come now, and let usreason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall beas white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)

This callof God to his creatures gives a clear and cogent example of his willingness toenlist our will by the use of reason and persuasion rather than brute force or“lording it over us”, or by conniving and coercion, giving us no way toexercise our wills. His desire is that we are willing followers, he doesn’t call us servants and slaves, butfriends. How does He demonstrate this relation with us?

This is mycommandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a manlay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I callyou not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I havecalled you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have madeknown Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I callyou not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I havecalled you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have madeknown unto you. (John 15:12-15)

The mostnotable way in which we know of his commitment towards us and of his friendshipis in knowing he lays his life down forhis friends. This “laying down”his life is not just (and I do not wish to minimize it at all) in the way hewent to the cross on our behalf, that is the extreme expression of it; but alsoin countless other ways he showed his love. When his mother was watching himexpire painfully on the cross he asked John to take care of her. This seems ordinaryenough, given the situation, but the significance of it is only apparent whenwe revisit the circumstances of his statement- he was in agony. Such is theintensity of pain involved in dying on a cross a new word was invented for it, “excruciating” is a direct reference tothe pain of crucifiction. Whenyou bang your finger with a hammer or jamb it in a door, when you are in pain-how much concern do you have for others right at that moment? In much the sameway a mother will (at the expense of being unpopular) order her children tobed. And this may be the most legitimate spiritualexpression (at that particular time) of her love for her child. She laysdown her life (in terms of her popularity) for the love of her child, and thatis just one of a myriad of ways in which her love is expressed. And it is thefuture happiness of the child that is firmly in her sight. Delayed gratification.

The writerof Hebrews urged us to follow the example of Christ and said:

Looking unto Jesus theauthor and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before himendured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand ofthe throne of God. For consider him thatendured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied andfaint in your minds. (Hebrews12:2-3)

He enduredhis short and tumultuous life culminating in an ignominious death on the crossfor the joy he knew and was fully persuaded of that lay ahead. He practiced DelayedGratification.

In additionto these things Jesus taught:

Henceforth I call you not servants; for theservant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for allthings that I have heard of my Father I have made known.

Jesus shared openly what he knew, this is the basison which he showed his commitment to his friends and family. People do not keepconfidence with those who are not friends, they are not open with them. In particular,people who want to keep an advantage to themselves do not share personal thingswith others who they wish to keep in subjection, to those they wish to keep ata distance. They wish to keep them in ignorance of certain things, they wish tokeep people in ignorance to keep the upper hand. To keep control. When people speak of " a need to know basis" what they are really saying is "I will keep key things to myself in order to keep the advantage". They cut thelines of communication. This is the very opposite of what Christ did for his own. Christ was often so forthright andstraight with people even at the risk of offending them. It is indeed a strongtest for a relationship to say something that is not pleasing to your friend,even sometimes to a family member:

WhenJesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them,Doth this offend you? What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up wherehe was before? It is the spirit thatquickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, theyare spirit, and they are life. But thereare some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who theywere that believed not, and who should betray him. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, thatno man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. From thattime many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. (John 6:61-66)

People in right relationship are notafraid to speak frankly and openly the truth even if it places some risk to therelationship as long as their motives are for the good of the other, even iftheir comments are misunderstood.

Anothermethod people constantly use to gain and keep control is to play one lot ofpeople against another, agitating strife- turning away people that previouslywere in good standing while keeping in favour with the people they wish tomanipulate, poisoning relationships. This is evident here: The situation isthat Pilate personally saw no evil in Christ, and rightly, no reason to detain him,and so wished to let him go:

And from thenceforthPilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let thisman go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speakethagainst Caesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgmentseat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover,and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King!) Butthey cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucifyyour King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Thendelivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. .(John 19:12-16)

The peopleopposed to Christ raised opposition to him byclaiming he was an enemy of Rome and therefore an enemy of Pilates authority, when this was not true. Theytook his Kingship out of context, it was not an earthly kingdom using the powerof might and force. Didn’t he heal the centurion’s servant? A centurion was asoldier in the pay of Rome, in service and loyal to theEmperor of Rome- Caesar.

And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto hima centurion, beseeching him, And saying,Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented. And Jesus saith unto him, I will come andheal him. (Matthew 8:5-7)

And didn’the guarantee the rights of Caesar over his own domain when he said (to theconsternation of those who sought to trap him):

Tell us therefore,What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, andsaid, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money. And theybrought unto him a penny. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image andsuperscription? They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith heunto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and untoGod the things that are God's. (Matthew 22:17-21)

Peopletwist things to their own advantage and to the detriment of those relationshipsthey wish to destroy.

Inconversation with others Christwas frequently asked questions which were designed often to trap him intoincriminating himself. People were waiting for an opportunity to make himappear bad before others. His response was not to call down fire and brimstone,or to use language as a character assassination, he responded in turn with a questionthat very often was calculated to make the hearer aware of their own charactershortfalls and their own biased assumptions.

As a partof the strategy to disadvantage others and keep control, the medium of languageand culture may be employed. This is illustrated by the practices of the RomanCatholic Church as in the days of Martin Luther. In those days the scriptures werewritten in Latin and the public were quite unable to access any of the HolyScriptures for themselves. Not only was the language of the scripturesinaccessible to the people but the people were banned from trying to access andunderstand them on the pretext that only “ordained clergy” were authorized tointerpret and teach the sense of scripture. All influence of the scriptures wasmediated to the people through the “Church” which became an absolute authority.This remained a stranglehold for centuries. In this way the public or thosekept ignorant are denied the “Love of the Father” and God was almostuniversally seen as a judgemental avenging God who couldn’t wait for hischildren to give him an opportunity to avenge his wrath upon them. So throughcommunication lines cut by the misuse of language a false understanding isinstilled in people who would be at the mercy of those who were in control.

Evil is not the domain of any particular culture since in all cultures it is present. Evil is a result of fallen human nature and it is expressed in different ways through different cultures. It is not fornothing that “In the beginning was the Word…”

In this context of parents struggling to do right by their child and not knowingly meaning to be manipulative; it is informative to ask another question. Where do God's children grow up? It was the mistaken belief of the Jews that all of God's children came from Jewish parents. (That is not to say of course that this is an exclusively Jewish thing!) They jealously guarded and manipulated events to maintain their culture, their traditions, and their family lineage. This was the Jewish mindset, and God used some extraordinary circumstances to change the views of the Apostles, who, being Jewish- were all steeped in those traditions. While Peter was sleeping he was repeatedly given a vision about God's ability to "cleanse" what had previously been understood as unclean. And from this Peter was eventually able to understand that the Gospel was for all who believe irrespective of their ethnicity or other distinguishing characteristics. The idea of the "goyim' a word often disparagingly used by the Jews was to distinguish the Jewish people from all others, a blanket statement based on their perceived special relationship with God through through being the physical descendants of Abraham. In one respect they were right, that God's children do enjoy a special relationship with Him. What was wrong was how that was worked out in their lives believing that this relationship came to be through being born in Jewish homes. Being "born again" was not understood.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.(Galatians 3:28,29)

God's children grow up in Muslim homes. They grow up in atheistic Communist homes. They grow up in the homes of secular naturalism, Hindu and Buddhist homes. They grow up in the homes of headhunters and cannibals. I'm not saying these homes are without evil, but the world is evil, everywhere. But know this:

According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.(Ephesians 1:4-6)

If God has successfully chosen his children from before the world began, to come into time, into existence and into families, into cultures, into a geographical area, into adoption into Christ and into glory, do we need to fear what the world can do?

Anotherstrategy to gain and maintain control is the misuse of special relationships.This was especially evidenced in the Second World War. Many God-fearing people in Germany were opposed to the government of the day, knowing deep down that things weremorally wrong with government directives and policies. By leveraging offloyalty to the scriptures the politicians and leaders of the country usedreligious language and authority for their own advantage- and so peoplecontinued to be loyal to the government when they should have been opposing it.The loyalty of people to the scriptures where citizens are urged to obey civilauthorities in no way relieves the people of their responsibility to obey Godfirst.

Let every soul be subject unto thehigher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be areordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth theordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then notbe afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise ofthe same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. (Romans 13:1-4)

This is ageneral rule for life- obey those that have legitimate authority over you,remembering that God is over both them and you. The limitation of authority isalways conditional on whether the authority is used lawfully and for good. Thelimiting factor is seen in the words “rulersare not a terror to good works” When one knows that the authority of aleader becomes unlawful and ceases to be for good one is relieved of theobligation to be under it. We see in Acts that the Apostles were in directopposition to the civil and religious authorities because they had exceeded andviolated the God- given mandate to rule. What was their response whenquestioned ? They reasoned this way-

But Peter and John answered and said unto them,Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.) For we cannot but speakthe things which we have seen and heard. (Acts 4:19,20)

It is clear when leaders exceed the authority giventhem by God, and it becomes evil, subjects (those under that authority) nolonger are bound to obey that authority. This is just as applicable when aparent abuses the God-given authority over children as it is for a man over hiswife or pastor over his congregation or government or any other institutionover its subjects. God cannot be usurped of his final and ultimate authority.So God gives authority to special relationships to protect and help thoserelationships flourish in peace and harmony. They start with a husband and wifeand then with parents and family, family and community, pastors andcongregations and government relationshipwith its subjects and of course supremely with God and his creation.

Toxicrelationships are those in which the one in authority demands absolute andunquestioned authority. One ploy is to use guilt over loyalty to thatrelationship at the expense of others. It is well known that cult leadersdemand all of their subjects attention and loyalty especially in theindoctrinating phase. They are to focus intensely on that relationship aboveall others, relationships with family members are cut off, obstructed ordiscouraged, they are persuaded that family do not have their best interest atheart.

2011-09-15T21:44:00.000+12:00

If A Man Speaks In A Forest And There Is No Woman There To Hear Him, Is He Still Wrong?

This question was posted on internet forums, below are some responses:

Referendums

2011-09-12T17:54:00.001+12:00

Who is Making a Leap of Faith?

2011-09-11T17:54:00.000+12:00

The Following is part of a discussion that can be found at: Cosmic Fingerprints

Jon you said:

“And I know you are a Christian so I can only assume you will give me a Christian answer to these problems. But since you are a big proponent of logic and reason, please try and answer these using those tools, instead of faith.” and also here: “I know you keep going back to the entire “Communication and Information” argument for the existence of God. You use real world references like DNA and computer code. But again, these are not leaps of scientific proof, these are leaps of FAITH.”

Your assumption that you would get a“faith based answer” is not your only assumption. It seems to me that you want everything to conform to the rules of logic and reason, fair enough, but have you ever done work to validate the rules of logic? Where do they come from? Why do you accept them and them alone for the basis of your “knowledge”? Wouldn't it be fair to say that your confidence in the rules of logic is faith based? How do you account for reason and logic? Whoever claims these are the only tools we must use in our deliberations ought to be prepared to offer an account for those rules. And when you do offer an account of them guess what tools you will be using? Yes you guessed it, reason and logic. No matter how you slice it, you must use logic and reason to justify logic and reason. The point I am making is that every worldview starts with assumptions. Your worldview assumes the laws of logic are the only valid assumption from which to determine and validate truth claims.

The Christian unashamedly makes assumptions too (that the word of God is true) and then uses reason and logic to make his or her claims. Both worldviews involve assumptions and circular reasoning. The Bible is true because God told me so. Where did he tell me? In the Bible. Yeah very circular. But don’t forget that first principles are basic assumptions that are also circular in that it takes reason and logic to justify reason and logic.

When you ask Perry to refrain from faith based comments why do you then violate that edict yourself? You posit other life forms of the universe as being necessary to validate the conclusions Perry makes about life on earth. That is a step of faith on your part isn’t it?
This is what you said:

“Now, if you have traveled the Cosmos and seen all the other ways life is made...”

Say what! There is not one shred of evidence for -another way life is made- let alone “other ways” and you want Perry to stick to the facts and not make faith based assumptions!
You also appear not to appreciate that the Christian faith is not a leap in the dark but is substantiated to a much deeper degree than that which is often appreciated.

Perry has made statements regarding the nature of information; scientists who specialize in the nature of information formulate these statements. These are scientists whose affiliations may be religious or non-religious, and there is general consensus among them. There are recognized universal laws concerning information. If these laws are agreed to by scientists of all philosophical persuasions then people interested in truth are obligated to account for these laws according to their own worldview. That is Perrys point, information as agreed to by scientists of various ilk, universally recognize that intelligence is a corollary of information; that is- that intelligence is a necessary cause of information in any form. Information does not exist apart from a mind that caused it. Now you seem to have completely ignored his point that you must account for the information in the genetic code. To assume that he has not been logical or reasonable when he accounts for it by according the cause of it to God is irrational on your part. You may give other explanations for that information such as Venusian life-seed planters or whatever but you must give an account for it and you violate your own rules of reason if you do not acknowledge Perrys elucidation as being entirely logical and reasonable.

In fact your oversight in this regard causes me to question your openness to the logic of it. In fact I could even posit that your reason for objecting to this explanation is not so much based on a love for truth or good science, logic, reason, and openness; but deep in your heart, whether you are conscious of it or not you are absolutely opposed to the theistic view of reality irrespective of the truth, logic and reasoning involved because there are deep moral implications in the acceptance of it for you as an individual if Perry is correct.

Perry said:

“Thus truth exists and an intentional super intelligence exists, because communication exists.”

To which you replied Jon:

“There is a flaw in the logic because if a “super intelligence” existed that created all the codes in the language of life, then there must an even greater super intelligence to create the information in the first one. Wouldn’t it be logical that this first “God” had in him codes and information in him as well? Because the only way “information and codes” can be created is with a super intelligence, right? Then there can not be a super intelligence by itself that wasn’t created, unless it came from the mind of an even greater being….INFINITE REGRESS.”

Here Jon you make a logical error yourself. There is no logical reason why a necessary being need be subject to the laws of contingent being. The law of causality requires that everything (including codes in the language of life) that comes to be must have a cause; a being that necessarily exists does not need a cause since by definition it exists necessarily. From the proposition of necessary existence comes the property of eternal existence such as we describe with the term God. Either the universe (and all in it) is eternal and is necessary being or the universe is contingent and there exists a necessary being that caused it and sustains it. Now if you say that the universe is eternal and necessarily exists as has been stated in outdated cosmology it would appear that you fly in the face of substantial scientific evidence to the contrary via the big bang theory and logically you must substantiate why you believe it is necessarily in existence rather than contingent. You must also explain how- in the light of entropy and the heat death principle- it can be termed as necessarily existing if the Universe is destined to go out of existence, since a necessary existence entails that it never fails to exist. So we take up Perry’s position that is logical and coherent- that a necessary being has instilled the laws of causality, which universally apply to all contingent existences (including genetic code). In short there is no logical reason why God should need a creator or something that wired him up.To add further to the reasoning behind Perry’s affirmation of God behind and responsible for the information in DNA is the Principle of Analogy. As Norman Geisler puts it in the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics:

“The principle of analogy states that an effect must be similar to its cause. Like produces like. An effect cannot be totally different from its cause.”

The effect we are discussing is an encoded language by which cell replication takes place. In a nutshell- cells are created through linguistic instructions. Does God work like this? Scripture says:

In the beginning was the Word, … and the Word was God… All things were made (by the Word) and nothing was made without the Word. (John 1:1-3 abridged and paraphrased)

Jon you said:

“How does this line of reasoning explain pain, suffering and natural disasters?Why design a world that is constantly cooling and erupting with violent events that kill millions of innocent people?What about our fear of pain and death? If God was real, then he has no fear of death or pain and yet he created beings that must suffer this fate. What does that say about him?Also, the problem of evil. Where did that come from?”

C.S. Lewis wrote about pain, he said something like “Why spell pain that way?” In other words why is it that whenever people raise this issue, why is it immediately put in a moral context? Before we deal directly with the question of evil in the world in relation to an all-good God we must address your presupposition in framing the question the way you have.
If you are a strict materialist then you have no valid basis from which to ask moral questions, why are you concerned with evil and good if there is for you (the materialist) no valid reason for a moral framework upon which to hang this question? The moment you invoke a good versus evil question you are assuming a moral universe and you must answer why you believe it to be a moral universe?So you must be clear in your own mind- if you think along the same lines as the anti-theist Dawkins who said:

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

If you agree in principal with that statement then by your own definition you invalidate the question of pain and evil. You cannot have it both ways- either your worldview precludes the question of evil altogether or you must agree with the theist and conclude it is indeed a moral universe and get serious with the difficult question of evil. Now if you believe the question of evil does require an answer you must explain where morality comes from and what is the source of your standard by which to differentiate evil from good. Here you may see the irony in Dawkins worldwide campaign to eradicate “the evil religion” which is basically a fundamentalist moral crusade, which has no foundation, according to the terms of his self-defined worldview.
At this point in our discussion of evil I would like to point out that the Christian God is omnipotent and omniscient and on the basis of that and his other perfections God has given a reality which includes the possibility and actuality of evil, but we trust in his perfect goodness and benevolence that this has happened for his ultimate good purpose.

Suppose a native came across a clearing in the jungle and saw his best friend with strange people obviously from an unknown country. His best friend was lying on a table and in an unconscious state; the stranger was poised over him with a knife. There was blood, strong lights, there was strange music, other people were gathered around in strange costumes, they wore masks, they were intensely occupied with the opening they had made in his stomach. There seemed to be articles of torture and strange machinery all around. I’m sure you would recognize a Vietnam style emergency operating theatre, but that would not at all be likely what was going on in the mind of the one whose friend lay on the table. What is all-important and makes all the difference to our attitude is whether or not we know the intention, and, that we do not have at our disposal the complete picture.

Consider this:
Without evil there can be no concept of Justice.
Without evil, mercy becomes an empty term, redundant.
Without evil, forgiveness is impossible.

Without evil, love -defined as unselfish, loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another- could be experienced, but not consciously known by mankind.

Is Truth Relative or Not?

2011-09-11T16:27:00.000+12:00

The Following is part of a discussion that can be found at: Cosmic Fingerprints
Abdullah says:

Well although I’m not an atheist I would like to “hear ” your thoughts on this.In the recent past I heard a conversation with a preacher from the US about TRUTH.He strongly argued that truth is just like a coin hence always has two sides.My problem with that view is this:What if I view truth as a cube? It would have mmm,six sides? Now the big question is:Is truth relative or not? I thought truth is just that :truth!

How can one extrapolate this statement made by somebody? :”Although it seems easier to exclude all but one possibility, and thus resolve all uncertainty, often more than one thing is true at the same time. Indeed, most Bible doctrines have two apparently opposing ‘faces’. For example, God is love, but also He hates evil; God is One but has three persons; we are saved by God’s grace alone, but also we must exercise faith to believe in what Christ has done for us on the cross; we live in a corrupted world, but this is not our home; one day we will die, but those who are in Christ will live forever; we are saved by God’s grace through faith and no good works can contribute to our salvation, but faith without works is dead. And there are many other examples. Attempting to resolve each tension will produce a heresy either by excluding one of the truths or by merging them together in a way which removes the potency of each truth.”

Pontius Pilate once asked Jesus: "What is truth?" The trouble was that he never stuck around for the answer. You are correct-Truth by nature is exclusive. One can readily see this by a word experiment: Suppose someone makes the proposition: "There is no such thing as absolute truth" If that was taken as true then that statement is contradicting itself because in saying "there is no such thing" it is itself an absolute statement, therefore it self-destructs. This proves truth exists, and that it is exclusive. Truth can be simply expressed as "that which corresponds to reality" Truth claims or propositions can be tested with the laws of logic or rational thought. The most widely used being the laws of non-contradiction. Simply stated they go like this:
1. the law of non-contradiction (A is not non-A),
2.the law of identity (A is A),and
3.the law of excluded middle (either A or non-A)

To relate to the metaphors of truth as a coin or as a cube, truth is not determined by majority vote. People today think in relativistic terms saying what is true for you is your personal truth but isn't necessarily true for me. An easy way to settle this is to ask: "Ok if I sell you goods worth $20 and you pay with a $50 note, is it okay to give you $5 change? After all this is true for me, too bad if it isn't for you, we both have different realities, tough!" No, when it comes to mathematical realities we soon see the exclusive nature of truth, why should we see philosophical or religious truth any differently?

What we have to be careful about is the difference between contradiction and contrariety. Many things appear as contradictions when in fact they are merely contrarieties. In scientific terms, light is seen as a wave, and experiments can verify this as empirically true, trouble is light can also be experimentally proven as a particle, it appears they cannot be both (a contradiction- violating the law of logic), so what has happened is that a new view of light has encompassed the truth of both views which is how we get "photons".

Many views in philosophy and religion are treated as contradictions when in fact they can be reconciled. Opposing views held dogmatically tend to polarize people into either or camps. This fact alone is evidence of the exclusive nature of truth. People cling to what they believe to be true. However some things must be held in tension, or in balance. Observe a long straight railway line, according to our eyesight the two metal tracks converge to form a point in the distance. Our eyes tell us this, but our knowledge and experience of perspective knows that any idea of convergence wouldn't just derail our thinking it would also derail the train! Jesus said not to judge by appearances. In Bible doctrines there is often what appears to be opposing views, or what look like contradictions when in fact they are merely contrarieties. To cite your examples:

"God is love, but also He hates evil"

But when "love" is properly defined, not according to human sentimentality but according to and in reference to the holiness of God, we see it would be evil not to hate evil. Hating certain things then becomes a function of love rather than the antipathy of love. A creed which defines "love" as the ultimate criterion for life but does not adequately define love, ends up tolerant of every evil; but virtue- as the compliment hypocrisy honours it with shows- is rejected, for it is jealously exclusive. And thus as David Hume once said, the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

"God is one, but has three persons".

The doctrine of the trinity is not a contradiction in terms, God is one- in one sense and three in another sense. This is not a contradiction in terms. God is one in terms of essence, but not in terms of personality.

Take the picture of the Morpho Rhetenor at the top of this post. It is a beautiful metallic blue color, is it not? Well actually it is not. What?! While it is perfectly true in one sense it is blue, in another sense it is not blue, there is in fact, no blue pigment in the surface scales of the moth. We know that ordinary white light is actually made up of the colors of the rainbow. blue being a part of the spectrum. Here again we must not judge according to appearances. The butterfly appears blue as a result of an effect known as interference, this filtering of the light that is hitting its scales results in light that is not blue being absorbed and blue light reflectivity is enhanced. In this way we see that there is no contradiction (blue, and not blue)depending on whether by "blue" we are referring to actual blue pigmentation or the appearance of blue due to reflectivity. To speak in plainer terms- would you call a mirror blue because it was giving you a reflection of a clear blue sky- obviously not! So the difference is qualified by whether we are speaking in general terms or in more scientific terms. Interestingly, this was brought to my attention in a book by Werner Gitt, called: In the Beginning was Information. In this book the results of information science makes clear the idea of intelligence as a prerequisite for information whether in computer code or in DNA, just as Perry has stated in Cosmic Fingerprints. It is the intelligence behind DNA that engineered the moth scales to a

"pattern ...repeated so accurately that the maximum deviation is only 0.00002mm."

As with the problem of Love and hate with God, so too, with the trinity. If we measure love in human terms then we will have difficulty reconciling God hating, for example, Esau. But who has a right to determine the meaning of love? God or humanity? When it comes to the trinity we can say that according to mathematical certainty one cannot be three. But we are not speaking in terms of maths, God is one, in one sense, and three in another. To say that God cannot be one and yet three persons is to measure God according to a human ruler.

C.S. Lewis wrote:

“[T]he mysterious something which is behind all things must be more than a person…something superpersonal…The whole purpose for which we exist is to be taken into the life of God.”“As you advance to more real and more complicated levels, you don't leave behind the things you found on simpler levels; you still have them, but combined in new ways—in ways you couldn't imagine if you knew only the simpler levels…On the Divine level, you still find personalities; but up there you find them combined in new ways which we, who do not live on that level, cannot imagine. In God’s dimension, so to speak, you find a being who is three Persons while remaining one Being…Of course we cannot fully conceive a Being like that: just as, if we were so made that we perceived only two dimensions in space we could never properly imagine a cube.”When thinking about the Trinity, we should not think it is an impossible contradiction or bad math (1+1+1=1). The idea is that there are three distinct persons, so tightly knit together that the three are united as one being. "Being" is something different than "person." We do not know exactly how, and these words are no more than imperfect analogies to our human experience. All we can say is that the life of God is both more complicated and simpler than the human experience. There is both unity and diversity in the being of God; God is "the One who lives as three." And to a large extent, we must be content with not knowing how this works. After all, we are talking about God; we cannot expect our minds to be capable of fully grasping the infinite.

Ravi Zacharias postulates:

The only way to explain unity and diversity in the effect is if you've got unity and diversity in the first cause. And Only in the trinity is there unity and diversity in the community of the Trinity.

Isaiah 40:18 says:

"To whom, then, will you compare God? What image will you compare him to?"

and Isaiah 46.5:

"To whom will you compare me or count me equal? To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?"

If we measure God in human terms then we "create" a god in our image. Man, then, is the measure of all things including God! This is the nature of humanism. In all our posturings about God we must guard against the danger of anthropomorphisms. The purpose of C.S. Lewis's book "God In The Dock" (as the title shows) is the ultimate temerity of humanism- when God is brought before the bar of human understanding.
The trinity may be beyond our grasp of logic but isn't necessarily antithetical to it. We merely concede that the trinity may be beyond our grasp as finite humans but not necessarily contradictory of logic.

Abdullah says:

"Attempting to resolve each tension will produce a heresy either by excluding one of the truths or by merging them together in a way which removes the potency of each truth.”

When we allow contrarieties to polarize us it may indeed as you say end in heresy, but as followers of truth we ought to make the effort to resolve these, but where there is definite paradox which does not contradict logic but goes beyond our ability to describe it we have to submit to the infinite knowledge of the most high God and acknowledge our own limitations. One of the most difficult anomalies is the tension between the human will and the sovereignty of God. Human freedom is guaranteed by the fact that "We love God" Intrinsic to the definition of love is that it cannot be forced or compelled. And yet God is ultimate being, therefore His plans cannot be hindered or his will thwarted. The only way to understand this is to see that one is absolute the other contingent.

For those who wish to further understand the difference between a contrariety and a contradiction in terms of theology listen to Ravi Zacharias in a two part series entitled:
The Coalescence of Contrarieties (Part One)
The Coalescence of Contrarieties (Part Two)

For further reading see the post:http://struth-his-or-yours.blogspot.com/2011/04/moral-relativism.html

Jesus Is...

2011-09-06T21:16:00.000+12:00

“JESUS IS… FOR LEASE”

I had to laugh when I first read this huge sign on the roof of a building, but then I had to give it some more thought… and it was sobering.

Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (Philippians 2:3-6)

There comes a time in the history of every movement that it gains enough momentum that it becomes “fashionable” to be seen as a part of it. When Christianity becomes culturally acceptable the foundations of it may start to be undermined in the hearts of those following it as well as those leading. Every movement that is based on trust and volunteerism, is liable to suffer the ignominy of being hi-jacked or politicised for ones own ends, to profit oneself in the name of the cause is not just the temptation of those who hold the responsibility of leadership but is also the tendency of those who seek the comfort of being “in Christ” without the incumbent need to be the “living sacrifice”. There becomes a mutual and unspoken complicity in maintaining the peace. This mutual “back scratching” becomes the unwritten contract, our memorandum of understanding. Essentially the wording is: “We will continue to support your leadership so long as your demands do not involve a loss of comfort, so long as we are not too offended or the demands too great”.

We all, like water unchecked, seek the lowest level. So long as we believe we are “in” we are happy and can stand all manner of preachy sermons to “equip” us. Just as politicians' loyalties are divided- so too for Christian leaders. The politician wants to do right by his country (if they have any patriotism in them anyway), but finds that he must try and please the voters. His constituents want more money, less tax and more time off, but the country is in debt and needs to pay its way. What happens? The politician fears the voter will veto him in the next election so he does not what is right, but what is expedient, and the country goes deeper in debt. When a persons livelihood is dependent on those who voluntarily agree to listen to him it is easy to envision the conflict of interest and divided loyalty that results in forgoing the "full gospel". This may go on for years and never be brought to anyone’s conscious attention. Many congregations not only survive on this understanding but flourish, perhaps numbers grow exponentially, and perhaps the only one that has ever left... is the Holy Spirit.

It was a well-known quip of one of our politicians that “we mustn’t frighten the horses”. What was important here was not whether truth was made manifest but that those who were the basis of power (as all voters are in a democracy) were not put off by the leader. Principle is sacrificed for power, maintenance of the status quo is deemed more important than honesty, more important than risking ones position for the challenge of integrity. Keep the masses interested, comfortable and happy is the goal not just of politicians but I fear also sometimes of those whose charge and responsibility is the preaching of the “good news”. Of course it is also the special interest of the congregant! The “Gospel of Peace” was never intended to mean the gospel of slumber and complacency. Luther is credited to have wisely said it is the preacher’s job to “comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”

The Bastion of the Secular Mindset

2011-08-25T12:21:00.004+12:00

Ever since I read Martin Luther's "Bondage of the Will" (having picked this out of a bunch of titles he authored merely out of curiosity) I have been thoroughly amazed at the response of people to any challenge focused on human autonomy. It's like "Whoa take off your shoes you're standing on holy ground".

The following is a sad testament to the influence of the worlds most influential philosopher- Immanual Kant. My sincere apologies to the original author as I foolishly did not keep a record of where this came from, but am reasonably sure its source is one of two authors, John Frame or Greg Bahnsen. My apologies- perhaps some kind reader will correct me. Kant's influence in the Western world is huge, and is no less apparent in Evangelical circles as it is in any secular sphere.

Although Kant professed a kind of theism and an admiration for Jesus, he was clearly far from orthodox Christianity. Indeed, his major book on religion, “Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone,” has as its chief theme the thesis that the human mind can never and must never subject itself to any authority beyond itself. In other words, to Kant, the human mind must be autonomous, subject only to its own law. Kant radically rejected the idea of authoritative revelation from God (either in nature or in Scripture) and asserted, perhaps more clearly than ever before (although this had always been the view of secular philosophers), the autonomy of the human mind. The human mind, that means, is to be its own supreme authority, its own criterion of truth and right.

"Kant’s philosophy explicitly presupposes human autonomy. It adopts human autonomy as the root idea to which every other idea must conform."

In his other works, Kant argued that what makes our experience intelligible is largely, perhaps entirely, the work of our own minds. We do not know what the world is really like, we know only how it appears to us, and how it appears to us is largely what we make to be. Thus, the mind of man not only is its own ultimate authority, but also replaces God as the intelligent planner and creator of the experienced universe. And, to Kant the human mind is also the author of its own moral standards. Kant saw, of course, that none of this could be proved in the usual sense of proof. He adopted what he called the ”transcendental method,” which seeks to determine the necessary preconditions or presuppositions of rationality. He reached his conclusions concerning human autonomy not by proving them by the usual philosophical methods, but by showing our need to presuppose them. Kant’s philosophy, therefore, does not merely assert or assume human autonomy, as did many previous philosophers; it explicitly presupposes human autonomy. It adopts human autonomy as the root idea to which every other idea must conform. That is what makes Kant unique and vastly important: he taught secular man where his epistemology must begin, his inescapable starting point for all possible reflection. So Kant is widely regarded as the most important philosopher of the modern period. He showed “modern man,” secular, would –be autonomous man, what he would have to presuppose about knowledge and the world in order to be consistent with his presumed autonomy. In other words, Kant made the modern sectarian “epistemologically self-conscious.” If modern man is not to bow to God, he must bow before himself; to that extent at least, he must be a Kantian.

"we can at last define the essential philosophical differences between the Christian and the non-Christian worldviews"

If Kant taught the world of secular belief the essentials of its own (until then, subconscious) theory of knowledge (“epistemology”), Van Til did the same for the Christian. As Kant said that we must avoid any trace of the attitude of bowing before an external authority, so Van Til taught that the only way to find truth at all is to bow before God’s authoritative Scripture. As Kant presented his view transcendentally, as the inescapable ultimate presupposition of human thought, so Van Til made and defended transcendentally the same claim for the revelation of God: that God’s Word is the only presupposition that does not destroy the intelligibility of human thought.Because of Van Til, we can at last define the essential philosophical differences between the Christian and the non-Christian worldviews. If Kant’s achievement makes him the most important secular philosopher of modern times, should we not say that Van Til’s achievement makes him the most important Christian thinker of modern times?

The innocent brutally murdered- It's those Christians again!

2011-07-19T20:31:00.003+12:00

Joanne McNeill wrote (Northern Advocate May 10, 2011) ‘… surely for avowed Christians…the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” should be fairly clear cut even if they still don't understand the Jesus cult's attempt to overturn the vengeful principle..."eye for eye, tooth for tooth"... ’ quoting from Exodus- and then she alludes to Jesus teaching to turn the other cheek. It’s great that you are reading the Bible Joanne- but perhaps a word of advice is in order.

A text taken out of context is a pretext for proof-text, its a post-modern idea that everyone has become her/his own authority; and people think that they can make any verse mean whatever they want it to mean. Intent is prior to content. Your intention was to give people the idea the Bible is internally contradictory and thereby give ground for dismissal as the inspired word of God.

The word given in Exodus was civil law by which to govern the people, just as our laws dictate how to live. Far from abrogating the law, Jesus raised the bar, if you so much as looked at a woman with lust you had committed adultery in your heart, if you even got angry with another without cause you had as good as committed murder. He affirmed his intention not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

We all know if people cannot rule their own lives, sooner or later the law will step in to rule it for them and over them. This is ruling imposed from the top down. Jesus came that we might have power to rule our own lives (even excelling the law) from the bottom up, from the inside- out.

If in doubt of the meaning of a text- consult the Author.

(John 8:45, 47) And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. He that is of God hears (understands) God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation- George McDonald

Footnote: Talk about editorial balance- Joanne's article appeared May 10, 2011 and they had my response by May 15. They finally printed my letter July18!

Footnote: Norway has just experienced a day that will go down in history as one of, if not- the worst- days in it's largely peaceful history. The perpetrator of these heinous acts, (it is claimed) is a fundamentalist Christian. Who would believe it!

Ruminations- Chew the Cud (Archives)

2011-07-19T17:57:00.011+12:00

Current accounts of knowing have placed the would-be objective scientific knowing (test-tube epistemology, if you like) in a position of privilege. Every step away from this is seen as a step into obscurity, fuzziness and subjectivism, reaching its peaks in aesthetics and metaphysics. N T Wright- "The Challenge of Jesus"

A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, ch.3

"The historicity of Christ is as axiomatic for an unbiased historian as the historicity of Julius Caesar." - F.F. Bruce

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (Albert Einstein) "

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently. Augustine

A creed which defines "love" as the ultimate criterion for life but does not adequately define love, ends up tolerant of every evil; but virtue- as the compliment hypocrisy honours it with shows- is rejected, for it is jealously exclusive. And thus as David Hume once said, the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

"The science of reasoning is of very great service in searching into and unraveling all sorts of questions that come up in Scripture....The validity of logical sequences is not a thing devised by men, but it is observed and noted by them that they may be able to learn and teach it; for it exists eternally in the reason of things, and has its origin with God."Augustine (circa third century AD)

"Coincidence" is simply God choosing to remain anonymous.

The Postmodern, as G.K. Chesterton mused, is one who has his feet firmly planted in mid air.

The only alternative to the doctrine of predestination is the assertion of the reign of total chance, of meaninglessness and brute factuality. The real issue is, what kind of predestination we shall have, predestination by God or predestination by man? Rousas John Rushdoony

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
Thomas Jefferson or Wendell Phillips

“Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their time.”

John Loftus quoting Voltaire. Problem is John, this is a double edged sword relating just as assuredly to atheists as it does to believers.

'The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a creative mind to spot a wrong question.' Anthony Jay

"Here," (in the West)," we believe that religion is an amputation of the brain" Ravi Zacharias

Atheism- Wish Fulfillment

2011-05-18T21:02:00.001+12:00

Joanne McNeill, Northern Advocate, March 15, 2011

Joanne bewails the rising crescendo of earth’s dilemmas (earthquakes, civil unrest, nuclear meltdown, economic global collapse, starving people) and (by her own reluctant admission),sounds like a proper Jeremiah. The next writer Nickie Muir- (March 16, 2011) similarly speaks of the end of the world, crazy weather, earthquakes, and berates “doomsday Christian fundamentalists”? What is common to both is their sense of uncertainty in the world (with which I fully accord) and their mutual disdain for anything that smacks of Christianity (with which I do not agree).

Joanne said, “It’s no good blaming God either. Gods were invented by humans who can’t bear the idea of facing the unknown alone.”

It was Sigmund (born- Sigismund) Freud (1856-1939) the father of Psychoanalysis who popularised the idea of God as a “wish fulfilment”.

Eduard von Hartmann said nearly a century ago: “it is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it.”

Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University and senior research fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford says: “Freud's atheistic view of the origin of religion comes prior to his study of religion; it is not its consequence.”

In his brilliant allegorical tale “The Pilgrims Regress”, C.S. Lewis tackles this widely accepted cliché. Madam Reason had just rescued John from the Giant through a series of riddles* and now he questions her on the meaning of the second one:

“‘It has two meanings,’ said she, ‘and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.’

‘How is that?’

‘You heard what they said. If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalising his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true.’

‘I see. And what is the cure for this?’

‘You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.’

‘I see,’ said John. ‘But what was the second interpretation?’

‘In the second,’ said Reason, ‘the bridge signifies the giant’s own favourite doctrine of the wish-fulfilment dream. For this also he wishes to use and not to use.’

‘I don’t see how he wishes not to use it.’

‘Does he not keep on telling people that the Landlord is a wish fulfilment dream?’

‘Yes; surely that is true- the only true thing he did say.’

‘Now think. Is it really true that the giant and Sigismund, and the people in Eschropolis, and Mr Halfways, are going about filled with a longing that there should be a Landlord, and cards of rules , and a mountain land beyond the brook, with a possibility of a black hole?’”

Then John stood... to think. And…then…he began to laugh…

‘You had better hear the rest of the argument,’ she said at last. ‘It may not be such a laughing matter as you suppose.’…

‘You see now the direction in which the giant does not want the wish-fulfilment theory used?’

‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said John.

“Don’t you see what follows if you adopt his own rules?’

‘No,’ said John, very loudly: for a terrible apprehension was stealing over him.

‘But you must see,’ said Reason, ‘that for him and all his subjects disbelief in the Landlord is a wish-fulfilment dream.’

*“Now hear my second riddle. There was a certain man who was going to his own house and his enemy went with him. And his house was beyond a river too swift to swim and too deep to wade. And he could go no faster than his enemy. While he was on his journey his wife sent to him and said, You know that there is only one bridge across the river: tell me, shall I destroy it that the enemy may not cross, or shall I leave it standing that you may cross? What should this man do?”

Intent Prior To Content

2011-05-18T20:56:00.000+12:00

Joanne McNeill wrote (Nth Adv May 10) ‘… surely for avowed Christians…the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” should be fairly clear cut’ quoting from Exodus and then she alludes to Jesus teaching to turn the other cheek. It’s great that you are reading the Bible but a word of advice is in order.

A text taken out of context is a pretext for proof-text, its a post-modern idea that everyone has become her/his own authority; and people think that they can make any verse mean whatever they want it to mean.

Intent is prior to content. Your intention was to give people the idea the Bible is internally contradictory and thereby give ground for dismissal as the inspired word of God.

If in doubt of the meaning of a text- consult the Author.

(John 8:45, 47) And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. He that is of God hears (understands) God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.

To give truth to him who loves it not is to only give him more multiplied reasons for misinterpretation- George McDonald

Bankruptcy of Secular Humanism

2011-05-18T20:39:00.000+12:00

Nickie Muir (Northern Advocate 4/05/2011) airs that tired old song yet again. How does she know the rejoicing madmen were Christians? Does she not see the difference between some misguided religious fanatic claiming to be a Christian burning a Koran; and the fanaticism of one who masterminded the Twin Towers holocaust resulting in 3000 or so dead and who has reportedly cost $2.4 trillion dollars to the economy?

The world has changed since Bin Laden.

All the Christians I spoke with condemned and were disgusted with the rejoicing over an evil mans death. On a local radio station a Christian woman was interviewed who had lost her husband in 9/11. She also condemned any rejoicing over his demise.

But let’s bring the issue closer to home. I have written before- that the stability of NZ society has for years been underpinned by a broad-ranging Judeo-Christian worldview and the goodness you enjoy in Godzone today is largely thanks to borrowed moral capital from a vestigial “Christian” culture.

Nickie’s world-view, summarized “secular humanism” or “philosophical naturalism” and personified in people like Richard Dawkins has made huge inroads in the way people think and relate today.

I could almost guarantee that there is a direct proportional relation between youth suicide, depression, family breakdown and all the associated ills common to today with the ascendancy of Nickie’s worldview. It undermines any sense of intrinsic value (we are just advanced animals) and purpose (there is no higher destiny other than what you choose), no absolute morality (make it up as you go) and gives no satisfactory answer for our origin. (The result of a cosmic accident)

Hubbard’s View on it correctly laughs at our problems in relation to

America

’s- but take a leaf out of

England

’s history-book. The world-view Nickie promulgates is even deeper rooted in Europe now and just look at what’s happening there!

Sad State: Cynicism

2011-05-03T15:02:00.002+12:00

I am heartened by those who have written in support of a Christian worldview, hoping also that others may question what they believe and reconsider the gospel rather than the cant it is often enveloped in.

Certainly it’s difficult to disagree with people on many fronts and not appear totally adversarial and thereby alienate people. It is certainly not my intention. As a Christian I feel it essential to defend truth categorically, realising at the same time what a lofty ideal this is.

When I read Joe Bennett’s column and others with a similar outlook I am struck by the cynicism of their remonstrations. I am frankly saddened by it. I think there is a tiredness in what they preach. Their work betrays the inner angst of soul. Perhaps they believe freshness only belongs to the young and naive.

Those who use the excuse that God did not give them enough evidence to believe in Him- are simply using a smokescreen that they have convinced themselves is actually an impenetrable fog- not of their own making. This then justifies a life committed to serving ones own ends. In admitting the existence of God we are immediately called into an unavoidable moral accountability- and it is this we instinctively seek to avoid at all costs- and what a high cost it is.

Ultimately people are more than a protégé of truth or reason. Our mind, passions, will, smiles, tears, aches and joys bear cogent witness to our spiritual nature, how empty the reduction of humanity to the firing of synaptic neurons or “dancing to our DNA.”

"No God"- A Wish Fulfillment?

2011-04-16T14:02:00.003+12:00

Joanne McNeill, Northern Advocate, March 15, 2011

Joanne said, “It’s no good blaming God either. Gods were invented by humans who can’t bear the idea of facing the unknown alone.”

It was Sigmund (born- Sigismund) Freud (1856-1939) the father of Psychoanalysis who popularised the idea of God as a “wish fulfilment”.

Eduard von Hartmann said nearly a century ago: “it is perfectly true that nothing exists merely because we wish it, but it is not true that something cannot exist if we wish it.”

“‘It has two meanings,’ said she, ‘and in the first the bridge signifies Reasoning. The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument.’

‘How is that?’

‘I see. And what is the cure for this?’

‘I see,’ said John. ‘But what was the second interpretation?’

‘In the second,’ said Reason, ‘the bridge signifies the giant’s own favourite doctrine of the wish-fulfilment dream. For this also he wishes to use and not to use.’

‘I don’t see how he wishes not to use it.’

‘Does he not keep on telling people that the Landlord is a wish fulfilment dream?’

‘Yes; surely that is true- the only true thing he did say.’

Then John stood... to think. And…then…he began to laugh…

‘You had better hear the rest of the argument,’ she said at last. ‘It may not be such a laughing matter as you suppose.’…

‘You see now the direction in which the giant does not want the wish-fulfilment theory used?’

‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said John.

“Don’t you see what follows if you adopt his own rules?’

‘No,’ said John, very loudly: for a terrible apprehension was stealing over him.

‘But you must see,’ said Reason, ‘that for him and all his subjects disbelief in the Landlord is a wish-fulfilment dream.’

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Moral Relativism

2011-04-14T21:24:00.000+12:00

In Joanne McNeill’s article, (April 5^th), she speaks of “University philosophy lectures…” and agreeing with “the existentialist view that we’re making up reality as we go along…”

When others believe the same things, adding impetus and credibility by numbers to confirm they are “on track”, this “orthodoxy” (serving as answers to the existential questions thrown up by life) - forms a culture or worldview.

Humanity has utmost “faith” in a native ability to discern truth.

Philosophers develop their views; teach them to prospective intellectual leaders of society, who in turn, become the politicians, film-makers, bankers, editors, lawmakers, writers, teachers, artists and others leading the direction of culture. Through their influence these views filter down to street level and become stitched into the fabric of the dominant thought patterns and culture of the day.

By the time a view is almost universally held at street level, few are questioning whether or not it is true- whether it corresponds to reality. A fundamental change in society has occurred.

The changes may be natural progression from certain philosophies gaining a wide following- others- the result of deliberate social engineering. Is tobacco smoking still socially acceptable?

The view that “we make up our own reality as we go along” seems laughable to commonsense citizen Joe - but without realizing it we are already compromised. The indoctrination is complete. Ever heard someone say “What’s true for you- is not necessarily true for me”?

Moral relativism is now endemic to our society.

“Many have such an opinion of their own capacity as to think that that cannot be proved which they cannot believe; by wisdom they knew not Christ.” -Mathew Henry (1662 –1714)

Undeniable Truth

2011-04-08T20:26:00.002+12:00

Nickie Muir, Northern Advocate 16th March, 2011

Nickie wrote about “not giving any doomsday Christian fundamentalists any oxygen” and later about her willingness to “turn her brain off” to “follow the mythic mind of old” in the person of some guru “complete with absolutist answers to everything”.

As far as I’m concerned the truths I have learned as an unashamedly “Christian fundamentalist” have been pure air to my brain. I’ve learned that even while one denies truth as an absolute one is in fact confirming that truth is indeed absolute. What Nickie is in effect saying is “it’s absolutely true that absolutes are false”. Even to make a denial of truth is to affirm its existence. She would have us believe absolutist answers are a load of cobblers. As to “answers to everything” the attitude of relativistic nihilism is not a palatable answer at all, it is this sacrilegious answer fed to our young people that devalues life to the point where hoons will chuck drinks at infants in prams.

We humans have an uncanny ability to deny the undeniable, obfuscate the clear.

There was a young man who said "God

Must think it exceedingly odd

If he finds that this tree

Continues to be
When there's no one about in the Quad."

"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd;

I am always about in the Quad

And that's why this tree

Will continue to be
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God."

Unknown

A line from “Creed” by Steve Turner:

We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.

Yeah Right...

RECENT OPINION COLUMNS IN THE NORTHERN ADVOCATE REFLECT GROWING ANTI-THEISM AND CHRISTIAN COMPLACENCY-

2011-04-01T22:27:00.013+13:00

In response to Joe Bennett, March 12, 2011.

CLICK ON ANY CLIPPING FOR ENLARGED VIEW

Northern Advocate March 15

We all have faith

I am glad your piece comes in the page headed- “OPINION”

You say you don’t want to get into whether the demolition of the church you mentioned was justified and yet you do raise the issue- it seems you bring it to our attention but don’t want to be challenged about it. Similarly you prefer your barbed comment about casinos and brothels untouched while churches are flattened left uncommented on also?

When you condemn “self appointed representatives of a loving and omnipotent god” don’t you condemn yourself? Aren’t you acting as a self appointed voice for secularism and atheism? Well perhaps it’s true you get paid to write these opinion pieces and therefore are representing the newspapers view that pays you. Well we could say the same of the clergy. It changes nothing except to confirm the opinions of the unthinking and prejudiced.

If all worldviews could be simplistically reduced to the category of “businesses” exploiting human need then why do you not include your own secular worldview? Why do you conveniently exclude yourself?

Perhaps you like to imagine your worldview as dealing only with facts and therefore decidedly superior but is that really the case? Many people would be shocked to find out that at the bottom of all science lies a statement of “faith”. I invite you to investigate the problem of induction which is a basic assumption of the uniformity of nature, a presupposition that lies at the back of all scientific statements. There is no such thing as the neutrality you imagine you espouse. Whether your worldview is secular-naturalism or religious; you are not neutral, not without assumptions that are every bit as accurately described as “faith based” as any religious creed.

-----------------------------

Northern Advocate March 26

Wisest step a Christian idea

You said “The wisest step taken by Western democratic society was to separate church from state.” The idea of the separation of Church and state was a decidedly Christian idea. James Madison (1751-1836), raised in a culture steeped in Christian principles being “one of the most important modern proponents of the separation of church and state”, politician, political philosopher, fourth president of the United States and considered one of the Founding Fathers of the same- is recognized as the “Father of the Constitution” being its principal author. He alluded to “The genius and courage of Luther” (16th century Christian reformer) in his efforts to separate Church and state, in turn Luther reiterated the ideas of Augustine a 3rd century Christian who was mindful of Christ’s (c5 BC/BCE – c. 30 AD/CE) edict “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” These recognized that questions of conscience such as what beliefs a person subscribes to cannot be enforced by legislation but must be left to individual conscience. It was never a Christian idea to stretch a person on the rack in order to get a confession of “faith”

-------------------------------------------

The following clipping was a response to Joe Bennets tirade, it should be noted that contributors do not choose the heading for their letters. Though John's response is well meaning and right in many respects, I could not let this large heading go uncommented on. Three well meaning Christians wrote letters speaking of Joe's free will. Ought we to confirm people in their delusions or encourage them to understand the nature of their bondage? In much the same way, the heading given to my letter repudiating Joe Bennett's idea, (that rationalism is uncompromisingly logical, but also relies on unproven and unprovable assumptions)- was headed: "WE ALL HAVE FAITH". There is a world of difference between the confidence atheists have in rationalism and the saving faith of a Christian. Essentially atheistic confidence is faith in oneself, worshiping human reason and "saving faith" is an abandonement of trusting in ourselves- our own wisdom, trusting in the Word and Wisdom of God. The headline below spells out only too clearly the natural conclusion that must logically be drawn from the teaching. Here also lies my complaint against the doctrine of freewill as wrongly understood and promulgated by mistaken but well-meaning believers. Human free will is elevated to God-like status when we wrongly believe that "if we will not- God can-not" and all too often this is what it translates out to in everyday belief. What should be abundantly clear is: that it is wrong to attribute faith to human will. Faithfulness towards God is in fact initiated and sustained by an "invasion" of our human nature from above, by the Holy Spirit whereby we are set free to "will, and to do, according to His good pleasure"

Northern Advocate,19th March

--------------------------------------

Northern Advocate March 21

In bondage

John Haddow speaks of Joe’s “Free will” a very misleading term. Truly Joe speaks freely of his beliefs- there is no compulsion on him to say what he does- so is, in a sense, both free and responsible. It is certainly not true to say that his will is free if what he actually believes is untrue. If he speaks deception but sincerely believes in what he says, he is actually in bondage to those lies. To be truly free always involves both the ability to know truth and the will to follow it, and in that sense it is wrong to speak of his “free” will. The will is actually subject or enslaved to the lies one believes. Wills are free only insomuch as we are following truth. Strictly speaking only God who is both perfect in knowledge and action has freewill. Jesus said “you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (this statement assumes bondage). Christians celebrate the privilege of knowing Him who is the personification of truth, not because we found Him, but He us. We did not choose Him, he chose us. Saving faith flows not from our “free” will but “by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:”

Briefly it goes like this: We once had free will (in Adam). We decided to interpret reality on our own terms without reference to God and have been bound by the lie ever since. The assumption of human “freewill” is the most universally presumed state of human nature and yet the most certainly and universally evidenced to be untrue. The most secure prison and enslavement in existence is the lie that masquerades as truth and is (almost) universally accepted as such. What need for a saviour if we are already free?

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I could not help but notice the cartoon of Hubbard during the nuclear crisis in Japan which appeared right under the eyecatching but erroneous header- "Faith flows from our free will". To many Christians this stands as an unassailable truth but the word of God has not left itself without a witness to this untruth. Certainly the issue today is the Goliath that needs to be overcome. In much the same way as the pervasive nuclear threat-perhaps prophetically- the sovereignty of man is big in his own eyes, mankind in a way feels his free will has the ascendancy over God.

Here is my own take on that situation with grateful thanks (and apologies) to Hubbard:

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Joe Bennett says:

• “Human kindness does more good than God” In typical naturalistic fashion Joe cannot see the transcendent God working “through” the goodness of people.

• “An earthquake leads inevitably to the conclusion that there cannot be a God who is omnipotent and benevolent”

This is a reference to Epicurus who is credited with this apparent contradiction. It is far from inevitable. If God doesn’t exist why does Joe insist on speaking in moral terms about the earthquake? If this universe is merely a random un-designed cataclysm of chance circumstances, why the moral outrage?

"When I was an atheist...my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A person does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line...Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning."

C.S. Lewis points out that to speak of injustice shows a moral ideal, a standard. Meaning and purpose are allied to justice, but how can anything but amorality arise from chance? His unavoidable conclusion counters the idea that the universe ultimately has no purpose and no meaning, but is merely the conclusion of time-plus-matter-plus-chance. If it were indeed so, then we, as parts of the whole, could never arise to say- "there is no meaning" (in meaningful terms!) Atheists are hard pressed to account for the moral law within and the intelligibility of the universe.

As G.K. Chesterton once said “Without God there would be no atheists.”

• “He” (the chaplain) “said ‘I was addressing an outmoded and nursery school version of God’ ”

You said “The chaplain’s God isn’t the Christian God at all” and yet you say the historian and two theologians are “clearly Christian”. I can certainly agree with Joe’s appraisal of the “Chaplains God” this is not the God of Scripture. You obviously feel qualified to discern just who is truly representing God and who is not, therefore you must be addressing a standard from which to make reference. If you apply an arbitrary standard that suits your own purposes it is easy to see that you will never be convinced of the truth of any of those claims. You take a caricature of Christianity and present it as a true representation and then tear it apart as if it were the real Christianity.

• “The word God comes with an historical freight of connotations that simply cannot be escaped. The first of these is a sense of the supernatural”

How can one who is certainly working from a naturalistic framework even comment on the supernatural? A naturalist believes per se that nature is all there is, that’s it, the whole show. By definition a naturalist has precluded the existence of the supernatural believing that the spiritual realm doesn’t exist.

• “The objective study of religious belief is a job for the anthropologists.” Again Joe alludes to the superiority and neutrality of science. In their worship of reason, rationalists have faith that reality may be totally explained in terms of science and reason. Yet (according to them) faith is supposed to be not only superfluous but antithetical to reason. The statement: “Only what can be scientifically proved is true”, is itself in need of proof. It is an assumption based on faith in the scientific enterprise.

As Ravi Zacharias eloquently points out:

"God has put enough into the world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing, and He has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone"

What is glossed over is that science itself smuggles in “articles of faith”. Basic to science are first principles based on induction which as Hume (more than two hundred years ago) proved are not consistent with logic. This is not to disparage good science or reason, but simply to say all worldviews, rationalist or whatever- rely on, trust in, have "faith" towards first principles that are presuppositions.

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CHRISTIAN COMPLACENCY- SHAME ON US

Northern Advocate April 02

Speak up

Oh my how the Western world has changed!

As “the apostle for atheism” Richard Dawkins admits-

"Although” (it) “might have been logically tenable before Darwin," said he, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Joe B. continues to throw down the gauntlet to “dyed in the wool faithheads”. Why are there so few responses to his challenge? Are we, as Christians, “fazed” by his tirades? Are we too busy? Do we not think it is a serious enough problem? Has Christianity swallowed the lie that privatization of religious belief is virtuous? Aren’t others uncomfortable with the marginalization of the Christian worldview? We live in an age where Christianity is openly mocked and put down (by dreary pseudo-intellectuals) as a crutch for the weak, a somewhat harmless diversion for peasants and the ignorant, or dangerous in the minds of zealots- without any serious claim to representing reality. Faith is caricatured, Christianity misrepresented and then (supposedly) torn to shreds as if it were almost a waste of ink.

Not only is Jesus the Christ scoffed at in terms of the personification of truth, but truth itself as a category is under attack. While we think of the change from a $50 dollar note in absolutist terms, (just ask anyone who was short-changed), people think of religious and ethical realities as relative. As G.K.Chesterton said, their feet are planted firmly in mid-air.

Truth by nature is exclusive- irrespective of whether we admit it or not.

At eighteen, as one in the grip of a secular, existential mindset, I responded to an emotional plea of the Gospel. In the many years since then I have continued to be delighted and amazed at the impeccable, unassailable credentials of that same Gospel from any perspective. I count myself fortunate to have listened, watched and read some of the worlds best minds throughout the ages debate both for and against its credibility- and I have not been disappointed.

For an excellent short article on the danger of complacency written over a hundred years ago by JC Ryle, follow this link:

http://www.eternallifeministries.org/jcr_danger.htm

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Tim Scripps, (April 5) questions the need to rise up to the challenge of atheism.

I hope, (after the burning of the Qur’an, and subsequent events), we learn that the freedom to speak publicly of ones worldview (be it atheist or Christian) is a fragile freedom that we must be diligent to protect. The acts of zealots- I do not condone, even less- the fanatics who responded with killings. While we respect those whose beliefs differ from ours, we stridently seek to engage their hearts and minds in healthy debate.

Why?

Because we believe the claims of Christianity are true. And truth brings true freedom. It is precisely because we believe Christianity true, that we need not seek to force people, but win hearts. Christianity, -true Christianity- above all, respects the dignity of humanity. Through reasoning and persuasion, it also pays the highest compliment to human autonomy.

We hold human life sacred because we believe all humankind bear the image of his maker.

I fully concur, atheists may appear morally superior to Christians. But the more an atheist lives consistently and true to his creed, the less reason they have to even consider morality. Secular society bears this out, because atheism has no real basis for morality. Atheists, consciously or not, are living off the borrowed moral capital of a vestigial Christian culture. Atheism, if consistently applied to the existential questions of life, makes life unliveable. Just look at the statistics during the Soviet reign of terror. Better still read the “Gulag Archipelago”.

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On Marriage

2010-11-14T18:09:00.003+13:00

It was my privilege and pleasure to partake in the wedding service of our eldest daughter recently. I just thought I would share some thoughts on a Christian perspective on marriage and I acknowledge Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his thoughts from a wedding sermon from the book "Letters and Papers from Prison"

It is good to welcome and celebrate the wedding day with a unique sense of triumph. When all the difficulties, obstacles, hindrances and doubts and misgivings have been honestly faced and overcome- and it is good not to take everything for granted- the happy couple have achieved the most important triumph of their lives. With the “Yes” that they have said to each other, they have by their free choice given a new direction to their lives.

They have cheerfully and confidently defied all the uncertainties and hesitations with which, as they know, a lifelong partnership between two people is faced; and by their own action they have conquered a new land to live in. Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm in their life’s journey.

Today however much they rejoice that they have reached their goal, they will be just as thankful that God’s will and God’s way have brought them here; and however confidently responsibility for their action today is accepted, they may and will put it today with equal confidence into God’s hands.

As God today adds his “Yes” to their “Yes”, as he confirms their will with his will, and as he allows them, and approves of, their triumphing and rejoicing and pride, he makes them at the same time instruments of his will and purpose both for themselves and for others. In his unfathomable way God adds his yes to theirs; but by doing so, he creates out of their love something quite new- the holy estate of matrimony.

God is guiding their marriage. They only see each other but in marriage they are a link in the chain of the generations in which he perpetuates the human race till the end of time. Their love is between those two, but marriage is more than something personal- it is a status, an office. Someone may desire to rule a country but it is not merely the desire to rule that makes him king, it is the crown that gives him the office of king. In the same way it is not merely their love for each other, but marriage that joins them together in the sight of God and Man. As they first gave the ring to one another and have now received it a second time from the hand of the pastor, so love comes from you, but marriage from above, from God. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity the rights and the promise of love. It is not their love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains their love. God has joined two together in marriage; it is his act and not theirs. What God has joined together let no man put asunder. God is the guarantor that marriage is indissoluble, enduring. It is a blessed thing to know that no power on earth, no temptation, no human frailty can dissolve what God holds together; indeed any one who knows that may say confidently; What God has joined together , CAN no man put asunder. They can now confidently say to each other “We can never lose each other now; by the will of God we belong to each other till death.”

Marriage is God’s idea so he has made a way for it to be workable; he establishes a rule of life by which two can live together in wedlock. Something of the divine splendour is represented in marriage. Marriage is a symbol of Christ’s love for the church and how the church is to love Christ. Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, just as the Church acknowledges the leadership of Christ- Husbands, love your wives, as he sacrificially gave his life for the church so too should a man love his wife.

In this way God gives to husband and wife the honour that is due to each. Just as she becomes his helper he too will “leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. Your relationship to each other becomes the most important one on earth; its not that you now neglect your parents but the priority has shifted. Above all your relationship with Christ is paramount.

God gives Christ as a foundation for marriage. “Welcome one another, therefore, as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” In a word live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship; least of all a marriage can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts.

Thank him for your marriage, for leading you this far, ask him to establish your marriage, to confirm it, sanctify it, and preserve it. And so your marriage will be “for the praise of his glory”. Amen.

Whose truth? Whose interpretation of reality?

2010-09-07T17:42:00.007+12:00

I was appalled to hear in an interview with the co-ordinator of Living Wisdom in Christchurch his answer to the question “How does the Christian answer people who are asking ‘Where is God in all of this devastation?’ The answer given was that it is a fallen world and as a consequence of that, natural evil occurs and God has no control over it or any part in it. And then a highly emotive analogy was drawn between the evil of a young girl suffering at the hands of a paedophile and whether that could possibly be considered the will of God.

Evil in any form whether a natural disaster or paedophilia poses difficulties for any thinking person and his/her philosophy- theism included. Even before we decide how to answer this question that has plagued philosophers from the time of Epicurus who famously put the question: “If God is all powerful and all good- Whence evil?” the question must be asked- “Whose interpretation of reality will I subscribe to?”

The answer you give to that question will determine your response to all the rest. As David Riddell used to quip in his courses, “psychology comes before theology”, or “what you believe is determined by why you believe it”. Or as some have said "Intent is prior to content".

There are only two basic answers to the question “Whose interpretation of reality do you subscribe to?” and that’s because there are only two options. Either the God who created the universe is qualified to tell us what is true or we interpret reality for ourselves on our own terms. After all isn’t that what Eve did? Isn’t that the whole problem of the fall?

People are constituted in such a way that when disaster happens we seek an answer. We need to know- Why? We seek consolation and purpose in our suffering. And there are only two sources to draw on for those answers. We either draw from human wisdom or the wisdom that comes from above.

Paul the Apostle enunciated clearly what the Christian response should be: (1 Corinthians 2:13, 14,16) … we do not use words that come from human wisdom. … we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths … It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. Those who are spiritual can evaluate all things…we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ

We must give an answer with words that are given by the Spirit. Where do we find those words? Nowhere but in Scripture and scripture alone.

Before we turn to the scriptures let’s just return to the analogy of the girl abused by a paedophile. There is no question of the injustice of her suffering, no question of the scarring that takes place, the evil that occurs. We picture in our minds a sweet innocent and pure girl that has been cruelly violated and all of this is true but it must be put in perspective. How do we do this? There is only one place we can turn for the right perspective on evil. And that is the cross. Only at the cross can we find the right and true perspective on suffering, and even there we must acknowledge only God has the right to teach us how to understand it, and only those to whom God has given the privilege of his grace are able to comprehend it. Even here God is sovereign.

Who in all of history was more innocent than Christ? Who in all of history had more to contribute (and did so) to the world but Christ? Who in all of creation deserved to live, and not just live but live above and beyond suffering? Yes, Christ. Whose life had an intrinsic value beyond compare? Christ. If God did not spare his own perfect Son should we put God in the dock because of the sufferings of others? Should we judge and criticize his word when it says regarding Job: They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him…and object “but you can’t mean this!” When we appear to let God off the hook by minimizing his influence in a situation are we really being faithful to God? Job answers us again: Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Who are we really protecting when we annul a sense of judgement that might have had a good purpose and subsequent effect on the people? Was Jonah more generous than God when he refused to give his message of coming judgement if the people of Nineveh did not repent?

At whose hands did Christ suffer? At the Romans hands? Yes, at the hands of Gentiles. At the hand of Jews? Yes. At the hands of religious authorities? Yes. Because of the crowd? Yes. Because of you and I? Yes. But while all of this is right and true it must never ever be forgotten that Christ suffered at the bequest of his father- God. … it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer… Isaiah 53:10. Now if Christ suffered- the just for the unjust- at the hand of God are we to deny his sovereignty in the affairs of ordinary mankind? Even in the tragedy of a little girls innocence rapaciously torn from her life?-The sovereignty of God is not silent.

But what fools paradise is it to teach that that little girls suffering had no meaning whatsoever? What consolation is it to teach her that her misery had nothing redemptive about it for her or anybody else? What comfort is it to her to teach her there is a loving God in heaven who could only wring his hands in despair at her suffering but couldn’t do anything about it? We then have to say: All things do not work together for good for those who are the called, for those who love Him- unless those things are under His control and clearly- according to this interpretation- earthquakes and child abuse are not! Who will willingly and rationally put their trust in a God of no consequence, an impotent God? On the contrary people do and have for centuries put their trust in one who they recognize is in control, despite having no immediate answer for their personal suffering and circumstances. It is precisely because of our confidence in the wisdom and knowledge and power and beneficence of our “chief of surgeons” that we willingly put our lives on the table for him to do with us what he will. Even as I say this I wonder what it may mean for me, yet say it I must.

I spoke recently with a man I have known for around twenty years. His daughter is severely handicapped. The care of her is a life sentence. And it gets worse not better. She is mentally an infant in the body of an adult. Strangely (if I’m not mistaken) it is the sovereignty of God in her situation from which her parents draw comfort and solace. Her dependence, their suffering is not alien to God, it is in their understanding that He knows what is best- that they trust, not in their own sense of justice. Put another way if it was up to us and our sense of justice to decide the future of mankind- Christ the Just would never have died for the unjust. As the Lord said to Peter at any suggestion that this was not the will of God- “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Wisdom from above or below?

Christ did not die because of God’s sense of justice, but because of mercy and grace which triumphed in his death. This raises a question, in fact several: Wouldn’t mercy be a meaningless word in a so-called perfect world, a world without evil? Would the word justice have any anchor or reference point to hang meaning upon, in a world without offence? What of the word sacrifice? Would that make any sense in an amoral universe? As C.S. Lewis puts it a fish cannot know what “wet” means unless subjected to a contrasted reality. A perfect creator must have (according to his perfect nature) created a world most capable of representing his perfections and that is the world we have, one in which evil must come, but woe to him by whom it comes!

Once again in this question of suffering we are thrust squarely back to the suffering servant. But the suffering of Christ was not our idea, not the way we would do it. There is a wisdom that comes from above and a wisdom that comes from beneath.

Elie Wiesel is a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor. In his most well known piece called “Night” he describes in gruesome graphic detail the prolonged death by hanging of a young boy at the hands of the Nazis. The older men had died within seconds because of their greater bodyweight. The young boy suffered for half an hour.

'… An onlooker was heard to mutter under his breath with increasing desperation, “Where is God? Where is He?” From out of nowhere , Wiesel says, a voice within him spoke to his own heart, saying, “ Right there on the gallows; Where else?” Is there a more concrete illustration than the death of Christ to substantiate God’s presence, right in the midst of pain? He bore the brunt of the pain inflicted by the wickedness of His persecutors- and showed us the heart of God. …In fact one of the most forgotten realities emerges from the scriptures …as Jesus struggled with the burden of having to be separated from His Father… as He bore the brunt of evil. He cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” The incredible truth was that at the very moment His Father seemed farthest from Him, He was in the centre of His Father’s will. God conquers not in spite of the dark mystery of evil, but through it.' (Ravi Zacharias- “Jesus Among Other Gods”)

When we read: …according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:… do we rationalize it and say with a big question mark “ALL things? Once we decide to add some sort of caveat to those words, and I believe many do, the impact of that verse is destroyed, as one would have it, it dies the death of a thousand qualifications.

When we see the Adversary taunting God with an attempt to destroy Job’s faith do we not also hear what is written at the end? They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him…And so should we to the people of Christchurch and to some we should also speak a message of judgement and repentance; of mercy and judgement.

(Lamentations 3:37)Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?

(Psalms 18:7) Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.

(Isaiah 45:7)I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster;

I, the LORD, do all these things.

(Deuteronomy 32:39)“See now that I myself am He! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.

When it comes to understanding evil, as in natural catastrophes, that which is comitted by others or evil within ourselves- we make our choices. Do we interpret these things through the eyes of a Karl Barth and Neo-orthodoxy, or John Calvin and reformed theology, or perhaps Hegel and Schleiermacher and liberal theology? At the very least we ought to know and recognize that the views expressed by people that we take as “authoritive” are following a tradition that has philosophical influences that are not necessarily according to the truth.

The people of Christchurch are undoubtably suffering, and just as surely some will be asking why? The answers the church should give will take wisdom and discernment. Not all of Christchurch are of Christs’ Church. Will you give the same answer to an unbeliever as the believer? We are assured that even carnally minded Christians are not going to appreciate the wisdom from above. One thing I know is that nearly all people will appreciate someone rolling up their sleeves and getting beside their neighbour whatever his or her persuasion and get their hands dirty to clean up the mess.

The God Who Won't Be Refused: If he has a mind not to

2010-06-12T23:19:00.017+12:00

A friend came the other day, an old friend. I mean old in both senses, his years are many and so is our friendship. “So”, he declared, “what revelation has God given you lately?” I am a little wary of this man, him and I have laboured with long and sometimes animated discussions over differences in our theology. I was thrown somewhat off-guard with his question and because of other things on my mind did not respond to the gauntlet he had thrown down. It was, at the time much easier to let him unload his mind and so he told us a story that another friend had shared with him.

Long after he left his question remained- like a splinter in the finger that is right where you use it most. “So what revelation has God given you lately?” echoed in my mind.

Casting about in the muddied waters of my head I searched in vain for what I could answer that cheeky question with. This only bugged me more. In desperation I reiterated something that had been on my mind some weeks ago. At a loss for anything fresh I got at it again, gnawing on it like an old dog with his favourite bone.

(John 17:1,2,3) These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

God, who- by definition is all-powerful- has given Jesus, according to his own testimony, power over all flesh. So the power of Jesus is an unqualified power over all flesh. To what purpose did God give Jesus this power over mankind? …that he should give eternal life…

According to the verses above, Jesus claims that he has the power to give eternal life to as many as God has given him.

So far this was all going over old ground to me, but thinking about it again something fresh did come. I was chewing over the word “give”. Whatever is given is … well a gift. Wow great revelation I thought! Now I know my Arminian friends think of this in these terms: God has given a mandate to Jesus to offer eternal life to as many as God says. But it is always in the persons own control whether or not to accept that offer. That person always has the last, the final, the ultimate say whether to accept or reject that gift.

But when you think about it, that rather nullifies the statement that God has given him power over all flesh doesn’t it? I mean if a person can refuse what is offered then how can it be said truthfully that Jesus has power over all flesh? What would be the point of saying that Jesus had power over all? Power to do what? Power to give the choice of eternal life? Is that the sense of it? But if all had power to refuse eternal life how then could it be given? But how can we relate these terms without doing violence to the meaning of any of them? Eternal life is a gift, a gracious gift, undeserved. It would also be wrong to think of Christ not accomplishing the directive God had made Jesus responsible for, that is giving eternal life.

If Jesus merely offered eternal life he could not be said to have fulfilled his commission to give eternal life. Neither does it make any sense to talk of "power over all flesh"- what power is needed over anyone to offer them something? And just as surely it would be wrong to think that Christ’s power to give entailed forcing someone to accept what they did not want- against their will. It all hinges on the word "give". Whenever this subject is discussed (at least in the Arminian camp) the word “give” is always used in the way we think of any gift. It can be received or rejected, welcomed or left behind at will. No-one- I will be bold enough to say- ever thinks of it in terms of how a strong man would give a weaker one a black eye! If the stronger has in fact “power over” the other then all the refusing in the world will not stop him getting his black eye!

Well that would do justice to the idea of “giving” by someone more powerful, someone who truly had “power over”, but that would only give rise to another problem. Are people known to go kicking and screaming into heaven? Are people forced to have eternal life against their will? Is that what scripture means? Are we mere automatons? No, not by any means. How then does God -through Christ-give eternal life? He makes them willing. He necessitates their willingness. By the secret work of the Holy Ghost in their stony heart he gets to work and gives them a heart of flesh. So when they come to Christ they quite naturally feel that it is purely their own decision, their own choice, voluntarily, wilfully believing in the Son whom God had given. But the scripture is careful not to leave us under the illusion that this was primarily our doing alone. Is this not why Jesus said: Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you… (John 15:16) Is’nt this also why it is written: (Ephesians 2:8) For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: (Ephesians 2:9) Not of works, lest any man should boast. Is this not also why the scripture says: (Hebrews 12:2) … Jesus the author and finisher of our faith…

How does the scripture define this gift “eternal life”? That comes in the very next verse: (John 17:3) And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

Knowing God and Christ is eternal life. This knowledge is the inestimable gift of God through Christ. This is further attested to in the verse: (John 6:29) Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

So the work of God is not only the revelation of the knowledge of Christ in the Bible, or in history- but it is the personal revelation of the knowledge of Christ in your heart- your faith in him is the result of God at work in your heart to believe. As also it is written here: (Philippians 2:13) For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. God in Christ has worked a willingness in you to believe and so do his good pleasure. Of course it felt like your own choice, of course it did not feel forced or coerced because the work went on inside you, not externally like some great bouncer forcing you out of the kingdom of darkness and into the light.

Well all this I have covered before elsewhere, what’s new? Well there is never anything new according to Malcolm Muggeridge it’s just old news given to new people! But this distinction came quite strongly to me. That is, the distinction between giving and offering. See here now the difference between Abraham offering and God giving. What I mean is- they both had an only son. And they both were given to be a sacrifice, or were they? Look carefully at the verses and note the distinction.

(Genesis 22:2) And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

Abraham offered up his son on the altar of sacrifice and that is precisely what God had required of him. In the final analysis his life was offered not given. Despite him being an only child of his beloved, the only one promised, just as Christ was the fulfilment of promise so too was Isaac and Abraham dutifully offered him up. But not so with Christ-

(John 3:16) For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Christ was not only offered he was given. Eternal life was not offered it was given. Christ- we are specifically told, and in the same context- had power over all flesh to give (not merely offer) eternal life to as many as God had given him.

(2 Corinthians 4:6) For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

When you shut your eyes you can effectively shut out the light, you can deny the knowledge of it, you can remain ignorant of whatever the light would make manifest- but what of it when the light shines in your heart where there is no hiding place left? It cannot be denied, Christ will not be denied. When the light comes on inside of you, shutting your eyes has no darkening effect.

When someone is said to know something it is understood that what is known is true, ie, knowledge is that which corresponds to reality. To make this clearer, one cannot know what is not true. For instance one cannot know that the Earth is flat. One can think they know that it is, believe that it is, one can assume that it is, imagine that it is, even hope that it is, but one cannot know this, because it is untrue. In this way we get a truer- indeed a Biblical- understanding of what it means to know something.

When one keeps this in mind it is easier to see the Biblical understanding when we read: (John 17:3) And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. (Emphasis mine) To know God truly is the gift of God through Jesus Christ and this knowledge is actually expressed here as eternal life. In the verses we have been discussing (John 17:2,3) we see that having the lights turned on inside of us with regard to who Jesus really is, and the true nature of God is not our work at all in one sense, but we, in essence, become His workmanship. So in one sense it is our work since it's going on inside us, we are thinking and knowing, and in another, more ultimate sense it is the work of grace, alone, through scripture alone, through Christ alone.

The word of God bears cogent witness to the truth of this understanding when in (Romans 9:23) it says: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory,(Emphasis mine) To "make known", in this sense is to bring a person infallibly to acknowledging and understanding of the truth. To make human choice ultimate here is to misunderstand the import of these verses and amounts to saying one can thwart God's plan, and purpose. To "make known" in this way is to ensure the object (the one hearing it) becomes subject to that knowledge. Of that knowledge- one cannot pretend, or claim ignorance or disown that knowledge, and neither can knowledge in this sense fail to conquer and subdue its object. but more than that, with this gift of knowledge ones heart is also warmed by it, no even more- Life comes with it- Eternal life. All humans can do as his disciples, is to merely proclaim that word, and to the best of our exegetical skills explain that word- but sovereign God alone by his Spirit keeps for himself the ability to "make known" the riches of his Glory.

This understanding is also attested to here in John 1:17,18 and the New International Version is clear in this regard:

For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

(Emphasis mine) This is not merely the sense of say, a town crier making known the edicts of king or council as he rings his bell and stands in the city square, scroll at arms length. No, this is knowledge imparted to those dead in trespasses in sins, who at the hearing of faith come forth as Lazarus did from the tomb!

We see here the difficulty and inadequacy of language to express an idea that does not fall into extremes of one sort or another. The word "made" is all too strong a word when we fall into the trap of understanding it as compulsion or force- outside of our will or against our will. And yet again it becomes all too weak a word when we understand it as knowledge that God has made known to us without the effect of conforming our will to that knowledge, as if it were merely a matter of our own will whether to come to faith- or not.

The great reformer Martin Luther also struggled with language (in this case the German language) to adequately express the meaning conveyed in these verses, to adequately express this truth. Remember, also that Luther was no stranger to the German language, having been credited by many to have unified the German language for the first time, through his translation of the Bible into his native tongue. Here is an excerpt from a good translation of his magnum opus, "The Bondage of the Will" (Henry Cole, c1923)

I could wish, indeed, that we were furnished with some better term for this discussion, that this commonly used term, necessity, which cannot rightly be used, either with reference to the human will, or the divine. It is of a signification too harsh and ill-suited for this subject, forcing upon the mind an idea of compulsion, and that which is altogether contrary to will; whereas, the subject which we are discussing, does not require such an idea: for Will whether divine or human, does what it does, be good or evil, not by any compulsion, but by mere willingness or desire, as it were, totally free. The will of God, nevertheless, which rules over our mutable will, is immutable and infallible; as Boetius sings, "Immovable thyself, thou movement giv's to all." And our own will, especially our corrupt will, cannot of itself do good ; thererfore, where the term fails to express the idea required, the understanding of the reader must make up the deficiency knowing what is wished to be expressed- the immutable will if God, and the impotency of our depraved will ; or, as some have expressed it, the necessity of immutability, though neither is that sufficiently grammatical, or sufficiently theological.

In the great controversy thrashed out at the Synod of Dordt in 1619 the Church authorities overwhelmingly rejected the Arminian views of the Remonstrants out of which came the five doctrines affirmed by the reformed (protestant) Churches. These are popularly known by the acronym TULIP – The “I” standing for irresistible grace. When God has chosen to save someone, He will.

In 1643 the English Parliament called upon "learned, godly and judicious Divines", to meet at Westminster Abbey in order to provide advice on issues of worship, doctrine, government and discipline of the Church of England. Their meetings, over a period of five years, produced the Confession of Faith, as well as a Larger Catechism and a Shorter Catechism. For more than three centuries, various churches around the world have adopted the Confession and the Catechisms as their standards of doctrine, subordinate to the Bible.(Quote from wikipedia.org)

In the following quote from the Westminster Confession (Ch, III, sec.I) one can see in the language the care that has been taken to preserve the immutable, infallible, will of God but also to convey the true condition, responsibility and limited sovereignty of the creature.

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsover comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

In the light of this discussion I hope and pray that it is abundantly clear that the will of God is the prime mover, indeed the author and finisher of our faith, our willingness to follow Christ, but also that it is equally clear but not equally necessary that the human will is involved in our choice of Christ. As God has ordained human will as contingent second cause in salvation.

(Isaiah 46:10,11) Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure… yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

For further discussion of this subject see: http://struth-his-or-yours.blogspot.com/2009/08/power-over-all-flesh.html

Compelling Reason by C.S. Lewis

2010-04-27T18:32:00.004+12:00

My interest in this piece aside from the fact that C.S. Lewis always writes interesting and extremely insightful work is the fact that I am gathering information from various sources in order to validate the work of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til is recognized as formulating a Christian Apologetic.

The Transcendental argument for God, otherwise known as Presuppositional Apologetics recognizes that people come to various truth claims with a readymade worldview through which all truth claims are interpreted. Therefore a persons epistemological background is seen to play a crucial part in what is recognized as true or not true (or whether "truth" is even a valid category!). It is therefore the presuppositions a person holds that determine how those claims are judged. The high claim of Presuppositional Apologetics is that unless one presupposes the existence of God, no other presupposition can logically account for anything. This post and others like it is concerned to point out the validity of this extraordinary claim by pointing to other writers who have seen and logically laid claim to a) either show non-theistic accounts to be using faulty logic or b) where an expert in a particular field has come to admit that from their particular world-view a certain phenomena is inexplicable.

In the following article Lewis attacks the idea of naturalism and its inability to logically account for rational thought:

Compelling Reason By C.S Lewis

An excerpt from: Religion Without Dogma (1946)

It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes. It is, to me at any rate, impossible to regard the thoughts which make up naturalism in that way and, at the same time, to regard them as real insight into external reality. Bradley distinguished idea-event from idea-making, but naturalism seems to me committed to regarding ideas simply as events. For meaning is a relation of a wholly new kind, as remote, as mysterious, as opaque to empirical study, as soul itself.

Perhaps this may be even more simply put in another way. Every particular thought (whether it is a judgement of fact or a judgement of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. Therefore, naturalism is worthless. If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat.

“The validity of rational thought… is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing.”

I remember once being shown a certain kind of knot which was such that if you added one extra complication to make assurance doubly sure you suddenly found that the whole thing had come undone in your hands and you had only a bit of string. It is like that with naturalism. It goes on claiming territory after territory: first the inorganic, then the lower organisms, then man’s body, then his emotions. But when it takes the final step and we attempt a naturalistic account of thought itself, suddenly the whole thing unravels. The last fatal step has invalidated all the preceding ones: for they were all reasoning and reason itself has been discredited. We must, therefore, either give up thinking altogether or else begin over again from the ground floor.

There is no reason, at this point, to bring in either Christianity or spiritualism. We do not need them to refute naturalism. It refutes itself. Whatever else we may come to believe about the universe, at least we cannot believe naturalism. The validity of rational thought, accepted in an utterly non-naturalistic, transcendental (if you will), supernatural sense, is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing. There is simply no sense in beginning with a view of the universe and trying to fit the claims of thought in at a later stage. By thinking at all we have claimed that our thoughts are more than mere natural events. All other propositions must be fitted in as best they can round that primary claim.

Holding that science has not refuted the miraculous element in religion, much less that naturalism, rigorously taken, can refute anything except itself, I do not, of course, share Professor Price’s anxiety to find a religion which can do without what he calls the mythology.

Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. (Wikipedia) Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, or more commonly "new atheist" whose world view could be described as philosophical naturalism.

Philosophical naturalism is characterized by the view that the observable universe is all there is, and that as the result of methodological naturalism the scientific method is the only way to arrive at truth, some however will concede that there are other ways of knowing. They reject the idea of the supernatural altogether and are also atheists.

In the light of the above by C.S. Lewis regarding the validity of rational thought as a basic presupposition for all thinking- consider the following which is a quote from Richard Dawkins' (River Out Of Eden, p.133):

In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.

"DNA just is. And we dance to its music."

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

In John C. Lennox's book, "Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target" he quotes Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of Christianity's foremost philosophical authorities. He is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics. Plantinga is a Christian and known for applying the methods of analytic philosophy to defend orthodox Christian beliefs (Wikipedia):

Plantinga: If Dawkins is right that we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes, then he has given us strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce- including Dawkins' own science and his atheism.

"If Dawkins is right... he has given us strong reason to doubt...the validity of any belief..."

His biology and his belief in naturalism would therefore appear to be at war with each other in a conflict that has nothing at all to do with God.

It is evident then that Dawkins' statement above is self defeating. If "human cognitive faculties" (ie. our ways of knowing, or rationality) are unreliable then he undermines his own theories, we must hold them also- as a natural consequence of his postulations- as not having any bearing or relationship to what is true. All by himself then he has managed to cut off the branch upon which he is sitting.

John Lennox: That is atheism undermines the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever- let alone a scientific one. Atheism is ultimately but one great self-contradictory delusion. (Gunning for God p.54)

Michael H. Warren Jr. :“Human irrationalism and evil are the difficult things to explain in the Christian worldview, but the Christian can live with such mysteries because the only alternative is to renounce all meaning, [and] to begin with atheism’s ultimate irrationalism. “Good,” “evil,” “reality,” “illusion,” and every other human word would be meaningless if atheism were true and the world were ultimately meaningless."

"error and imperfection in the world require a perfect, absolute God...mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would be meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to identify occurrences of imperfection"

"The atheist believes that error and imperfection in the world imply the non-existence of a perfect, absolute God. Rather, error and imperfection in the world require a perfect, absolute God, because such concepts as “error” and “imperfection,” whether in the fields of mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would be meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to identify occurrences of imperfection, and without an ultimately rational structure to the world which allows concepts, whether positive or negative, to be applied, whether rightly or wrongly, to the changing realm of human experience. If God did not exist, it is not merely personal, psychological feelings of having a meaningful life that would suffer, but rational meaning would suffer.”

In the following link to another post, the irony of "intellectual progress" rather than setting us free through the truth, has, if we are to follow the likes of Dawkins, narrowed down what it means to be human through successive layers of determinism. For further thoughts of Lewis and Richard Tarnas go to the post "The Irony of Modern Intellectual Progress"